The Better Part of Valor
by Mad Maudlin
Summary: They say that discretion is the better part of valor. But for Auror Ron Weasley, a mysterious new case and an abrupt encounter with Draco Malfoy threaten to blow the lid off his bestkept secret.
1. Chapter 1

1.

At six-fifteen on my twenty-fifth birthday I was ready to either kill someone or run away from home, so when I say that things went downhill from there, you have to realize, I mean they went bloody _subterranean._

At six-fifteen on my twenty-fifth birthday, I was doing paperwork in my cubicle relating to the detention of a known purveyor of controlled substances. In English, that meant I had caught a wizard, who turned out to be about a thousand years old, selling naughty things out of his back garden without a proper license. I don't think even he knew half of what was sprouting back there (either that, or he'd discovered new magical properties of marijuana) and most of it was so blighted it's a miracle anyone was stupid enough to buy it. Hell, I don't even know why the case was referred to the Auror's department, except maybe possibly there might've been Dark poisons involved, but that's _it,_ and yet there I was, writing up about ten stone of forms and reports so I could file them in triplicate with "all the proper authorities." I don't actually know who is considered a proper authority, but I know that almost everything eventually ends up in Central Records, and I reckon they use them to make birdhouses out of paper bloody mache. The arrest had gone smoothly, too, and that only annoyed me more, because if I was going to have to fill out that much paperwork I wanted to _earn_ it.

The clock on my desk had one hand on _Quitting Time_ and the other on _Take a Vacation,_ and I was ready to force-feed all ten stone of paper to the receptionist at Central Records, when Harry knocked on the edge my cube and leaned against the doorway. Harry has unnatural paperwork-finishing abilities, on top of everything else, and I was actually surprised to find him hanging about so late. "Hey," he called out to me. "Fancy a pint?"

"Can't," I said. I squinted at the name I'd just printed on the bottom of a very important form: it looked like _Roonil Wazlib,_ and I wasn't even using one of the Twin's quills. The quill I _was_ using, I chucked across the cube so hard it punched straight through the wall and stuck there.

Harry's eyebrows went up. "Bad day?"

"Bad life," I muttered. "Go on and get your pint, I'll be back at the flat before I die."

"C'mon," Harry said. "A birthday present. I'm buying."

I debated it for about five seconds, which mostly consisted of the little voice in the back of my head telling me how much I'd regret putting off all this paperwork until morning. I don't know about other people, but my little voice sounds an awful lot like Hermione. Somehow that makes it really, really easy to ignore. "All right," I said as I started stuffing paperwork into my rucksack. "Just one. I'll finish this at home or something."

"Excellent," Harry said. "I know just the place, you probably haven't heard of it..."

Of course I hadn't heard of it. Harry had been on a five-year mission to find a place in the wizarding world where he could get a pint without being mobbed by screeching fan-types. There was no sign of success on the horizon, but in the process I think he'd visited just about every place in Britain with a liquor license. I tipped heaps of parchment into my bag as I listened to Harry ramble on about how great this new pub was, and how lucky he'd been to find it, and all the things that made it so interesting and different from the other thousand pubs he'd visited before it. I wrestled a couple of stray memos in a desk drawer to bother with in the morning, and we walked to the lift together, with Harry still raving about wherever it was he was taking me.

I'm pretty sure he noticed I wasn't listening before we got out of the building, but he didn't call me on it until we were walking through Diagon Alley in the dark. "Knut for your thoughts?"

"You'd be overpaying."

"C'mon, mate, what's really the matter?"

I thought about lying or blowing him off, but my inner Hermione clicked her tongue at me, so I sighed and said, "Went to the Burrow for lunch today."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

"I argued with Mum."

Harry cringed. "That sounds bad."

"You don't know the half of it."

"Dare I ask what you argued about?"

I kicked a chunk of snow across the street and watched it explode against a rain barrel. "You know Mrs. Twill? From the quilting circle?"

"I remember your mum mentioning her, yeah."

"Mrs. Twill has a niece."

Harry exhaled through his teeth. "Does she."

"Yes."

"How old?"

"Just turned nineteen."

"Bit young."

"Mum promised I'd take her out this weekend anyway."

The great thing about Harry—well, one of the great things about him—is that we've known each other so long, we don't have to ask too many stupid questions. All I had to tell him was that Mum had set me up and he could just extrapolate out that I had protested it since I might have to work, she had scolded me for working too much and made a couple of dire predictions about my loveless future, I had asserted my ability to control my own bloody future, and she had cried a bit about grandbabies before I walked out. We both knew it without my having to say it, because it had happened too damn many times before, and by now he knew the routine as well as I did. He whistled, the way you do when you've just seen something really impressively gross, and I nodded. That's all we had to say.

After a couple of minutes, though, Harry said, "You know, mate, there is one way you can get her to lay off."

(That's the bad thing about Harry: we've known each other for too damn long.)

"Not happening, mate," I told him.

"I'm just saying."

"Yeah, well, I'm not listening."

See, I'm pretty shit at keeping secrets. Most of the time, anyway. There's one secret, though, that I've been keeping for a long time, and I've kept it from my family and my coworkers and most of my friends, and kept it pretty damn well. But Harry and Hermione—the real one, I mean, not the one in my head—they've known me too well and for too long for me to keep anything from them. So when I broke up with Hermione a couple years ago, I didn't tell her we had grown apart or that I wasn't good enough for her or anything. I told her I was a great big nancing poofter.

She told Harry about it, because that's the kind of friends we are. When we were all on speaking terms again, they told me it wasn't a big deal and it didn't affect our friendship. Hermione even gave me pamphlets about it. And, you know, it's not like I'm not grateful for that. I like them both, really, and I think I might've gone a bit mad by now without them. I definitely wouldn't have any place to live without Harry splitting the rent.

The problem is that neither of them—Hermione in particular, but Harry too—they didn't quite get the part about my queerness being a _secret._ As in, I wasn't going to tell anyone but them. Ever. Hermione switched off between telling that there wasn't any stigma attached to it anymore, and that there would never be any progress if people didn't start opening up about it. Harry just sprung the subject on me now and again, usually after I'd just rowed with Mum or somebody about my personal life. Neither of them really got that I stood to lose more than I could gain, that honesty wasn't worth being rejected by everyone I'd ever met. They didn't seem to get that I was happy keeping this secret.

Well, mostly happy.

Not unhappy.

I mean, it wasn't going to _kill_ me.

But they didn't seem to get that, and by that point I was tired of arguing with them. So when Harry said, "I'm just looking out for you, okay?" I nodded without responding. I had pretty much given up on trying to make him understand that discretion is the better part of valor.

Instead I asked, "Where is this great pub of yours, anyway? We've been walking for hours."

"Right here," he said, and pointed to a bright doorway just ahead. The sign above it was two polka-dotted abominations against nature that, if I squinted, looked a little like hippogryffs. "It looks a lot better on the inside," he promised.

I shrugged. "Don't care about the décor, mate—it's not like we're staying."

"Right," Harry said, and cleared his throat. "You sure you're only in for one drink?"

"I'm sure," I said. "Work in the morning, right?"

"Hasn't always stopped you before," Harry said, and cleared his throat again.

I shook my head. "Not in the mood for it, I told you."

"You're positive?"

"Harry," I said, as I opened the door of the Spotted Hippogryffs, "right now all I want to do is have a pint, finish this bloody paperwork and get some sleep."

As I stepped across the threshold, every person I had ever met jumped out at me shouting _"SURPRISE!"_

It was a good thing Harry was standing just behind me, because you just don't _do _that kind of a thing to an Auror—he stopped me before I got halfway through a curse. I blinked at everyone standing in front of me and smiling, and then I blinked at Harry, who let go of my wand arm with a sort of sheepish smile, and as they all start singing "Happy Birthday," I vowed I was going to murder every single one of them.

Well, all right. Maybe not that bad. But I wasn't at all happy about it.

Fred and George—of course, the natural ringleaders for this sort of thing—came out and shook my hand up and down, grinning through the rain of confetti and undulating streamers. "Happy birthday, little brother," Fred said. "Like it?"

"It took us ages to plan it," George added.

"I'm thrilled," I said, and I really, really wanted it to come out sarcastic, but with that Hermione-like voice in the back of my head hissing at me to _be polite_ I couldn't quite muster it. "It looks really, um. It's great."

George grinned wider. "Weren't sure you were even going to show up for a while—Potter, what kept you so long?"

"Just work," I said. "Look, I really—er—"

They looked at me with their eyebrows up. Harry looked at me and mimed drinking a pint. The Hermione-voice in my head told me to thank everyone politely and have one drink to be social and then go home and finish my work like I had planned.

Like I said, that voice is really, really easy to ignore.

"—would like a drink."

Fred cackled and threw an arm around my shoulder. "Never fear," he said. "We've got just the thing to get you caught up to the rest of us..."

They steered me towards a table in the back piled high with badly-wrapped gifts, but along the way I had to stop and say hello to everyone in the pub—it looked like they'd rented out the whole place for the night, and it was packed. I guessed from the decorations—which included posters of winking witches who'd lost parts of their bikinis, and some truly obscene streamers—that our parents weren't within ten miles of the place, but Bill and Ginny were around to wish me well. So were a surprisingly large number of pretty girls, and though I was positive I'd never met most of them, they all seemed extremely, er, friendly. "Did Mum put you up to this?" I asked George after the third pretty girl in short robes winked at me.

"Whatever do you mean?" George asked.

"We're just looking out for your welfare," Fred added, with his own wink.

"You shouldn't have," I mumbled.

We eventually got to the back table, and I was parked into a large ugly chair dead center, right in front of a large, decrepit grand piano. There was even a pianist to play it, a short thin bloke who sat with his head hunched so far down it looked like it had fallen off entirely; the song sounded a bit like an attempt to cover the Weird Sisters, but not a very good one. I mean, he was playing it all right, it just wasn't that good of a song to play. Fred plopped himself down at my left and shoved the first package into my lap, while George sat on my right and pushed a tall glass of purple liquid under my nose. "Bottoms up," he said.

I frowned at the glass. "You sure this is safe?"

"What makes you think it isn't?"

"Well, it's smoking."

Fred snorted. "It's perfectly fine. We test everything on ourselves, remember?"

The Hermione-voice by this point appeared to have given up on voicing an opinion. I shrugged, and tipped the glass back into my mouth.

Things start to get kind of fuzzy beyond that point.

It wasn't like I actually wanted to be at the party. It was loud and obnoxious and the twins were pushing strange girls on me every fifteen minutes, in between drinks. Harry and Ginny lost themselves almost immediately, and that got me wondering why Mum wasn't harassing _them_ about marriage and grandbabies yet, and that plus the girls plus...well, you know, my _life..._I think I had a pretty good excuse for getting pissed. So my one pint with Harry turned into a purple drink with the twins, plus or minus a couple of pints, plus or minus some other drinks that I don't really remember that specifically.

The problem is, when I get pissed, I get sloppy about certain things. Things like not spitting when I talk, or standing up straight, or not flirting with blokes in front of everyone I've ever met in my life. Not the people who'd come to the party, thankfully, I wasn't _that_ drunk. But there was that pianist. When he actually sat up straight, he had brown hair and a mean little beard, but he was fit in a sort of skinny and angular way, and like an idiot I stumbled up to the piano once or twice to offer him a drink or try to say something nice about the music.

The first time, he just ignored me, and somebody else got my attention before I did something ridiculous. The second time, he had just finished a song, and he snorted with his eyebrows up the way Hermione sometimes did when she didn't think I was funny. "Don't you have someone else to bother?" he asked, without even looking up at me. "One of your lady friends, for example?"

"Not my type, you could say," I said. I was practically falling all over his piano, but only because the room was moving. I leaned in closer. "Ladies aren't my type."

One side of his mouth went up in a little sort of smirk, and for a minute I thought he looked a bit familiar, but, you know, when you're that deep in the drink everybody starts to look like your long lost cousin or something. "That's a pity," he said. "They're all seem quite willing, from what I can see."

I leaned in and gave him was I reckoned was an alluring look. "What about you, eh? You willing?"

He didn't even glance at me, he just said, "Not with you. And please, get off the piano before it collapses."

And, you know, if I had been a smarter man—or at least a more sober one—that would've been the end of the thing. I'd have gone home and finished my paperwork and things would have all fallen out very differently. As it was, I was a drunken moron. When last call came around, the pianist wrapped up the song he'd been playing and slipped into the back of the pub, near the loo. And I shrugged off the girl trying to flirt with me and followed him.

This is how drunk I was: I followed the pianist into the corridor, which was dark as sin, and grabbed the first warm body I could find. I sort of assumed it was going to be the one I wanted; I was lucky it wasn't one of my brothers. I sort of hugged him from behind, so I could feel the contours of his chest and shoulders and arse. He felt thin, but fit, and I whispered into his ear, "Hello there. Don't I know you?"

"Perhaps," he said, in a voice that was also familiar, but only a little bit. He didn't sound at all annoyed to be groped by a drunken stranger in the dark, either, so that was encouraging. "I know a lot of people."

"Think I do know you," I said, and I could feel his stomach through his shirt, his warm skin. He smelled good, too. "Think I'd like to know you better."

"I don't know," he said, grabbing my hand in his. "Are you still this friendly when you're sober?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm the friendliest bloke in the world."

I slid my hands down his hips, and he caught them and held them there, squeezing a bit. "And do you know how to keep a secret?"

I spun him around and leaned against the wall—okay, more like slumped—either way I pinned him there, good and tight. There was so little light in the corridor I could just barely see it shine off his eyes. "I know a thing or two about it," I said, and kissed him on the mouth.

The next couple of minutes were...good. Very good, even, although I was really too drunk for them to be excellent. My bloke didn't seem to mind a bit: he had his hands inside my robes and tucked into the back pockets of my trousers almost immediately. He certainly didn't have any problems with having my tongue in his mouth, believe me. It all felt very good indeed, because it had been a long time since I'd pulled anyone—since I'd had time to even look, really. I was ready and more than willing for just about anything I could get.

That, more than anything, probably explains my subsequent actions over the next few days. That, and also the fact that I'm a really stupid bastard.

I snogged the hell out of the bloke I assumed to be my pianist in the back corridor of this pub, and we both came up for air at just about the same time. We were nose-to-nose, or, well, nose-to-chin; I could feel his breath on my neck, and I could smell my own breath bouncing off his face. (It actually smelled pretty bad.) And then somebody opened the door of the loo, and in the angled bar of light that came out of the door I recognized that I was not, in fact, snogging the pianist from the bar.

The bloke I was pinning to the wall had light blonde hair, almost white, really. In the brief moment of light, he looked up, and I recognized gray eyes and a sharp, clean chin. I blinked at him. He blinked at me.

"Merlin's fucking bollocks," he said.

"Huh?" I said.

The bloke I had been snogging shoved me against the opposite wall, and I stumbled and went down flat on my arse. By the time I got my legs under me again, I was totally alone in the corridor. I stuck my head in the alleyway that the corridor led onto, but it was empty and it smelled bad. I checked the loo itself, but it was empty and smelled worse than the alley. I went back into the pub and looked around, but the last stragglers from the party were making their way out, and Fred was haggling with the proprietor about whose job it was to clean up the confetti and streamers still crawling through the air. George saw me, and grabbed my arm. "Ron? All right, mate?"

"Nyeh. Yeah," I said.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Something happen when you went to the loo?"

I shook my head again, because there was no way on earth I could explain that I just accidentally snogged the hell out of Draco bloody Malfoy.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

I hoped in a vague way that the morning would bring me a dazzling moment of clarity. Instead, it brought Hell's own hangover. This is why I really ought to listen to the Hermione-voice more often that I do.

While I was standing in the shower and praying for death, I tried unsuccessfully to sort out the chain of events of the night before. I had followed my fit and bitchy pianist into the corridor. I had grabbed somebody of the right size and shape and gender. It had turned out to be Malfoy. They couldn't have just changed places, at least not after I'd got my hands on him—maybe the pianist had ducked into the loo right quick while he was out of my line of sight, so I'd grabbed the wrong bloke. But that left the question of what the hell was Malfoy doing at my sodding birthday party in the first place.

I mean, I hadn't seen him in years. _Nobody_ had seen him in years. Not since the Wizengamot acquitted him, in fact. They'd only done it because Harry had leaned on them—at that point Harry could've talked himself into being named Minister if he'd tried—and he'd only done that because of Malfoy's help with the Horcruxes. Malfoy had apparently decided to show his unending gratitude by falling off the face of the planet. There were always rumors, of course, but I'd never really believed he was retired to a private island and blowing his vast fortune on piña coladas, or escaped to a foreign dungeon to plot his rise to power as the next Dark Lord, or any of the other silly stuff. He was just gone, and I hadn't really minded.

Not that I wanted him to be gone. Or that I wanted him around, either. I just didn't care either way. I mean, yeah, in school I'd wanted to break his pointy face most of the time, but after the war I'd had more important things to worry about. Too many people were dead to care about insults from when I was twelve (and thirteen, and fourteen, and fifteen...oh, you get the point) and if Harry could forgive him for the things he'd done, I reckoned I could as well. If Malfoy wanted to disappear for a while I really didn't blame him, but I also didn't give a shit about where he went or what happened to him when he did.

Only I'd just tried to suck out his tonsils last night. Even if I'd been drunk, that suddenly made matters a bit more personal.

(Not too personal though. I mean, we'd just snogged, is all. Even if he was fabulous at it.)

I mulled this over as I made my way to work, hangover and paperwork in tow. Harry met me at the lift with a cup of coffee, a sympathetic smile, and a really big hickey. "Good morning," he said, though it came out sounding sort of like a question.

I grunted and took the coffee, and drank down half of it in a go. It did absolutely nothing for my stomach, but it did make me marginally more alert than I had been.

"You don't look so good, mate," Harry said with his smile slipping.

"No hangover potion," I said. "We ran out last weekend, remember?"

He cringed. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it." I glanced at the hickey. "Harry—er—vampire?"

"What—? Oh." He actually blushed at that and tugged his collar up, which completely failed to hide the hickey. That's the problem with Harry dating Ginny, I know way more about her love life than I ever wanted to. At least that explained why he hadn't come back to our flat last night. That's Harry's kind of luck, that he gets to score at my damn party.

(Well, I'd almost scored—if the loo door hadn't opened when it had I probably would've. With Malfoy. Bloody hell, why wasn't I more repulsed by that idea?)

"Kingsley's looking for you, by the way," Harry said as we headed towards my desk.

I thought about the large pile of paperwork I still hadn't turned in, and winced. "What's he want?"

"Dunno, probably your new assignment."

Which was only a slightly better prospect than a scolding over late paperwork. "Probably another idiot trying to grow magic marijuana, I bet."

"You really think there could be two of them?"

"Well, something like that." I dumped my satchel on the desk and let the paperwork fall all over the place; the top drawer of the desk flew open and all the memos I'd shut up in there the night before burst out and started sailing around my head. It looked like they'd been breeding, too. (See? Even my memos get laid more often than I do.) "Fucking hell!" I snapped, swiping at them.

"I've got them," Harry said, and started plucking the memos out of the air like Snitches. "Go on, go find Kingsley, you're already late."

I thanked him and headed over to Kingsley's office—becoming head of the division had its perks, I guess, like real doors and windows. He let me in as soon as I knocked, and I found a couple of people I didn't recognize sitting in with him. "Weasley," he said, "so glad you could join us, we were just discussing your next assignment."

"What's that, sir?" I said.

"Muggle poisonings," Kingsley said, and nodded at one of the other people in the office—who, actually, I did recognize after a minute. His name was Rickets or Riplick or something, and he worked for my dad in the Muggle Affairs Office. "Mr. Rickler can explain it.

Rickler, right, I was close. Rickler cleared his throat and leaned forward in his seat a bit; he wasn't as old as my dad, but only just, and his glasses were as thick as coasters. "There have been four in the past three weeks, right here in London," he said. "All of them very public, I'm afraid. The poor fellows turned up in shops or parks, unconscious and covered head to toe in spots. Green ones. Two of them had tails, as well."

"The Healers at St. Mungo's haven't been able to identify the poison," the other person in the office said—a witch, just a bit older than me, with a tight little ponytail on the top of her head. "It doesn't match anything they're familiar with, which lead us to suspect it was Dark magic at work."

"And you are...?" I asked.

"Emilia Aldershot," Kingsley said. "The Enforcer assigned to the case. I don't necessarily share her conviction that the poison is Dark magic, but I agree the situation is highly suspicious, and considering the circumstances of the last case of mass Muggle attacks..."

He didn't have to finish—Walden MacNair had escaped capture for five years and killed a dozen Muggles in their beds before we nabbed him in Wales. I wasn't aware of any other Death Eaters who might still be on the loose, but if there was even a chance the poisoner was one—or even a copy-cat—well, I can see why they might want an Auror on hand, just in case. "I understand sir," I said. "When do we start?"

"Right now, if you don't mind," Aldershot said. I think she could tell I was hungover, because she was frowning at me a little bit. Though it's actually kind of surprising she was able to make any kind of facial expression at all, with her hair pulled that tight. "Our liaison with the Muggle police has questioned all the victims, and they all reported visiting the same club the night they were poisoned. I was hoping to start the investigation there."

"By all means," Kingsley said, before I could even get a word in edgewise. "This matter remains the jurisdiction of the Muggle Affairs Office until we can actually prove that Dark magic is involved."

"Excuse me," I said. "If it's their jurisdiction, what am I supposed to do?"

Kingsley smiled at me, the kind of smile that crocodiles might give you when they're not hungry _yet_. "Consider yourself on loan for the time being, Weasley."

"Loan? What?"

"To Miss Aldershot, for the duration of the investigation." Yes, definitely a crocodile smile. This is why you should always turn your paperwork in on time, kids. "I'm sure you'll comport yourself with all due professional courtesy."

"But, erm, who do I report to, exactly?"

"Oh, I'll be keeping a close eye on the case," Kingsley said confidently. "But Miss Aldershot will remain in charge, and you'll report to her first and foremost."

You see what I meant about things going subterranean on me?

I followed Aldershot and Rickler out of Kingsley's office, and couldn't quite manage to swallow a yawn. Aldershot gave me another one of those little frowns. "This club is called the Golden Claw," she explained as we walked towards the lifts. "From what we've been able to gather, it's quite posh and on the exclusive side."

"Lovely," I said.

"All the victims admitted to visiting it the same night they were found poisoned," she said, "although the interviewer said they seemed very cagey about doing so, and they all claimed not to remember most of what happened to them while they were there."

"Sounds pretty typical of a night on the town," I said. "Have a bit too much to drink, you start to lose track of what happens around you, you know?" (Or, at least, you start to wish you would.)

"I don't go to clubs," Aldershot said stiffly as the lift arrived.

"Why am I not surprised?" I mumbled to Rickler. I don't think he head me.

We went to the club, which was a much bigger fiasco than it sounds like. Rickler spent about half an hour instructing us on how to Transfigure our robes into undetectable Muggle disguises (hint: trenchcoats), then spent the entire Tube ride asking very loud questions that made everyone around us edge away slowly. I don't know how Dad finds these people. It didn't help that Aldershot didn't actually know where this Golden Claw place was, so we rode four different trains in circles until she and Rickler together figured out the correct stop, and when we got off it we still had to walk about forty-five minutes before we got to the location. I spent the whole trip with my head between my knees as a precaution, and when Aldershot pointed out the front door of the club I gave in to the temptation to grumble. "Why couldn't we have just borrowed a car?"

"The expense couldn't be justified," Aldershot said. "There's no point in wasting Ministry resources."

I looked at Rickler, who was huffing and puffing a bit, and he shrugged at me. I asked Aldershot, "Have you ever met my brother Percy?" She wouldn't answer me.

The Golden Claw, when we finally got there, didn't look particularly interesting from the street; it was just a doorway, set between other doorways, in a building that looked like it belonged on some sort of historic registry, if it wasn't on one already. I can't actually describe it—ask somebody who knows something about architecture—but it was very pretty, and very old, and sort of dignified, like somebody's maiden great-aunt in her best hat and robes at teatime. There was a plaque on the door, embossed in fancy calligraphy: _The Golden Claw Gentlemen's Club, est'd 1867._ That was all. Aldershot knocked.

Everything about the man who answered was long and thin, from his hair to his fingers, and he was dressed like the maitre d'. He looked at all of us down his long, thin nose and twiddled his long, thin moustache for a moment before he asked, "Can I help you with something?" and even the _s_ in _something_ was long and thin.

Rickler held up some kind of Muggle identity card—at least, I assume it was a Muggle identity card, thought my dad had something that looked the same and he called it a billfold. "We're with the police," he said very importantly. "We'd like to speak to the, er, the keeper of this establishment."

The maitre d' raised his long, thin eyebrows at us and looked us over again in a way that made me want to wipe my nose, just in case there was smut on it. "I'll speak to the manager," he said finally, still lisping. "If you'd like to come in and have a seat..."

The inside was very dim, even in daylight, and all the furniture was dark wood and burgundy upholstery with delicate gold and brass accents everywhere. I was pretty confident that the chair I sat in cost more than the Burrow. I mean, I'm not exactly an expert on how the other half lives, but I'd had enough brushes with poshness to know "really bloody rich" when I saw it. This place was the kind of rich where they don't even have to show it, you're just supposed to _know. _I hated it immediately.

Since it was the middle of the morning, there weren't any customers, and just a couple of waiters cleaning things up. Still, it took the maitre d' quite a while to find the manager, who turned out to be round-faced and gray-haired and very, very nervous. "Good morning," he said, and started shaking our hands way too vigorously. "Good morning, I'm Mr. Cox. Always glad to be of service to the police."

The manager was lisping almost as bad as the maitre d'; I resisted the urge to clean my ears with my fingers. Aldershot took over, introducing us all and explaining, "We're investigating a few illnesses that seem to be linked to your establishment."

Cox blinked at us. "Illnesses?" he lisped. "What sort of illnesses?"

"We suspect that someone may have—er—drugged your customers," Rickler said. He found a piece of parchment in his trenchcoat and squinted at it. "With, erm, a contaminated batch of street drugs, such as perhaps Peeseepee, Ecstasy, Co-cane, Hair-oyn—"

Cox giggled, sort of shrilly. "Surely you must be mistaken," he said. "My club is quite clean. We don't have—those sorts of things here, I can assure you."

"We've got four very ill men who report this as their last stop before a hospital," I said, and leaned in on Cox. Aldershot frowned at me again; I think that was the only expression she could manage without tearing her scalp off.

Cox giggled again. "Well, Mister—er—Weasley, let me put it this way: if there is anything untoward going on at the Golden Claw, I'm certainly not privy to it."

"Are you familiar with these men?" Aldershot asked, and passed him a list of the victims.

Cox picked up the paper and skimmed it. "It's certainly possible."

"It's possible?" I asked. "You mean you don't know?"

"Well, the names certainly ring a bell, but..." He leaned forward, hands folded. "You must understand, my patrons tend to be rather, ah, significant gentlemen. They place a certain premium on discretion."

"Do you meant to say that you won't tell us what you know about the victims?" Aldershot asked.

"Madame, I cannot tell you what I don't know," Cox said with a bit of a wink. "I believe the term is 'plausible deniability.'"

Aldershot just blinked at this, but I suddenly understood his meaning perfectly, and hated the club all the more for it. There are gentleman's clubs and then there are _gentleman's clubs,_ and judging by Cox and the maitre d' we had stumbled into one of the latter. At least that explained all the bloody lisping.

I leaned in while Aldershot was still pondering things. "If you're so discreet about the activities of your customers," I asked Cox, "how can you be so certain that there aren't any drugs in your establishment?"

Cox's smug little smile collapsed. "Er...well, of course, there are...there are certain things I do attend to...that is, where matters of criminality are concerned...well, of course I would never..."

I cut him off before he could keep gibbering. "Mr. Cox, if you wouldn't mind, we'd like to look around the place a bit."

"Certainly!" he said, and leapt to his feet. "I can give you a grand tour, if you'd like—I'm always at the service of the authorities—"

So we followed Mr. Cox around the Golden Claw, which he showed off like he was going to sell it to us. The main floor was full of nooks and crannies where all sort of things could go on out of sight of the staff, and there were "privacy lounges" in the back and on the second floor that had their own liquor cabinets, "restocked daily with the finest products on the market." Mr. Cox claimed again that there was no firm way to know who had been up here when, and at that point I was really wondering if we'd have to go through and test every bottle on the premises for poison. Unfortunately, that might've actually improved my day, compared to what happened next.

"What about your staff?" Aldershot asked Cox, after he'd finished gloating about the amazing quality of their wine cellar. "Might we be able to talk to some of them?"

Cox waved his hands sort of vaguely on limp wrists. "Well. I don't suppose that would be impossible, but I'm not certain they would be of any help you—our patrons value our—"

"—Discretion, right, you keep telling us that." I said. "That being said, can you tell us who was working on the dates these men got sick?"

"I suppose I can look it up," Cox said a little tartly. "If you'd care to step into my office?"

We stepped into his office, while I thought evil thoughts about idiots who'd rather protect their own arses than help catch a criminal. The office was small and much less posh than the public areas of the club, and there were two desks crammed inside at awkward angles. Cox sat down at one and started fiddling with one of those big gray Muggle box-machines, a comoopter. I don't care for the things myself—Dad always warned us about minding where things keep their brains—but Rickler looked terribly excited to see one in action as we all maneuvered behind Cox's chair. The other desk also had a comoopter, but this one wasn't lit up, and there was a big stack of envelopes in a box on top of the key board.

"It'll just be a moment," Cox said while he fiddled with the comoopter. "The schedules have been relatively stable recently, but—ah—what did you say the dates were?"

"February eleventh, nineteenth, twenty-fi—"

Behind us, the door to the office opened. "Mr. Cox?" someone called. "Are the paychecks ready?"

"Yes, yes, yes," Cox said irritably, "they're on the desk there, Black. Can't you see I'm busy?"

Aldershot repeated the dates. Rickler poked and stroked the comoopter with big eyes. I folded my arms, and just happened to glance over my shoulder at the intruder, the first staff member I'd met today without a lisp. He was sorting through the envelopes on the desk, not looking at any of us, a thick scarf hanging loose around his neck. Even though he was wearing a hat, and his head was bent over the stack of envelopes, I could still see enough details to recognize him.

Aurors are trained in stealth and tactics. In that moment, I wasn't using either.

"Malfoy?" I blurted.

He looked up—yep, I would've recognized that pointed face a mile away—and blinked at me. I blinked at him. He spun away, out the door, and with Aldershot and Cox blocking me in, I had to vault over the desk after him. "Malfoy, wait!"

He shot ahead of me—I was a good six inches taller, but he'd had the head start—and bumped around a corner, weaving through the main floor of the club. I hurtled over a table and made a swipe for the trailing edge of his scarf, shouting for him to stop. He abruptly turned and headed up the stairs, past the doors of the privacy lounges, through a door at the end of the corridor and out of sight.

I crashed through the same door at full speed. It opened directly onto another staircase. Because that is just how my life goes. By the time I came tumbling to a stop on the bottom step, Malfoy was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

We went back to Cox's office, and he fetched me a box of plasters and some ice for my head, neck, both knees and left wrist. "I'm terribly sorry," he said, " I don't know what got into him, David's always been an exemplary employee—"

"David?" I asked. "Who's David?"

Cox blinked at me. "David Black. The, ah, fellow you were chasing out of here?"

I glanced at Aldershot and Rickler, who both shrugged. Aldershot asked, "How long has Black worked for you, Mr. Cox?"

"Oh, years, years...ever since our previous pianist went to Sweden to get his operation."

"Pianist?" I asked. "He plays piano here?"

Cox nodded. "Oh, yes, every weekend—is that—surely you don't think—"

"No," I said very loudly, "we don't think Ma—Black had anything to do with the drugs."

"Then why did you chase him?" Cox asked.

I cleared my throat and told him, "Just a case of mistaken identity," which was not, technically, a lie. Really.

Rickler and Aldershot finished up gathering the names of employees and we made our way back to the Ministry—this time Rickler demanded we Apparate from an alleyway, for which he earned my undying gratitude. While I set about charming my bruises off, Aldershot announced, "Malfoy is the number one suspect, obviously."

"I don't think so," I said.

"He works there on weekends," Rickler pointed out. "The victims were all poisoned on weekends."

"That's circumstantial," I said, and transfigured a quill into a mirror so I could get a good look at my face. I immediately regretted it. "There's no motive and there's still no method."

"You want a motive?" Aldershot asked. "He's an admitted Death Eater."

"He switched sides in the end," I said.

Rickler harrumphed. "Why would he work for Muggles unless he was up to something? And under an alias! It's all terribly suspicious, if you ask me."

I shook my head. "He's been working there for years without doing anything, why start now? Besides, he's the pianist. He's not going to be in a position to slip anything to anyone."

"He's a wizard with a concrete link to the scene of the crime," Aldershot declared, "and this is still my case."

I sighed, tried to rake my fingers through my hair, and yelped when I hit another lump. "Fine. Fine, let's go chasing Malfoy. I don't really think he's involved, though."

"It would seem like a rather obvious conclusion," Rickler said with a sniff.

And, okay, it was pretty obvious. They did have points. It was pretty bloody out of character for Malfoy to be working for Muggles under an assumed name, and it was a pretty big stretch for a load of Muggles to get poisoned while he just happened to be in the same building. Something didn't sit right about it for me, though, something seemed to be missing. I just couldn't put my finger on what.

_Malfoy leaves the wizarding world. Malfoy goes to work for Muggles. Malfoy, years later, poisons a bunch of Muggles. Malfoy is my birthday party for no damn reason and snogs me in the corridor._

Wait. That last bit didn't have anything to do with the case.

(Didn't it?)

"You've got Malfoy's address, don't you?" I asked Aldershot. "Along with all the other employees?"

She flipped through the papers that had come out of the noisy box under the comoopter. "Yes, of course, I have everyone who worked the nights of the incidents."

I grabbed the right paper out of her stack and read it over. "This isn't too far from the Leaky Cauldron."

"Easy access to an apothecary," Rickler said ominously.

I rolled my eyes. "I'm going to watch the place for a while. See what he's up to."

Aldershot frowned again. "Excuse me, Weasley, but _I_ am the primary investigator of this case."

"Sorry," I said. "_May I_ watch the place for a while and see what he's up to?"

Her face turned an interesting shade of fuchsia, but eventually she nodded. "Go on, then. I'll start interviewing the other staff of the Claw. Rickler, I'd like you to start asking around at all the greenhouses and apothecaries you can find—see if they've seen Malfoy recently and what he's purchased."

"If we still don't know what the poison that's being used is, what good will that do?" I asked.

"It might be evidence," Aldershot said.

"He might be brewing Pepper-Up Potion by the gallon, too, and that wouldn't tell us anything about the Muggles," I pointed out.

She scowled at me, and I could've sworn her ponytail slipped. "Weren't you just leaving, Weasley?"

"Right. Sorry."

I volunteered to watch Malfoy's flat because, as an Auror, I was better trained in the arts of surveillance and stealth, and because if that was the direction that the investigation was going to go I might as well go along with it, whether I thought he was guilty or not. That's it. That's all. Really. This was my job, and I was being professional about it. If there was any part of me that was still thinking about the night before (and I'm not saying there was and if there were, it was only because I was going mad from blue balls), that part was completely separate from the part of me that was working on the case.

Watching the flat also gave me a chance to think a bit about the case without Aldershot and Rickler jumping to conclusions on me. Malfoy's flat was conveniently close to a bus stop, so I was able to lean against a light post and watch the front entrance without looking out of place or having to talk to anyone. (Except when the bus actually showed up. Then I had to pretend I'd forgotten something and run away until it had gone again.) In the chilly air, I reviewed everything I'd seen at The Golden Claw, particularly those private rooms upstairs. All manner of things could go on up there that the staff would be "discreet" about, and if this mystery poison brought people out in green spots, that staircase I'd fallen down would make a convenient, almost witness-free exit.

Though, come to think of it, the poison was also problematic. Granted, I was never great shakes at potion-making, but a poison that causes green spots and memory loss sounded more like a second-year prank than Dark magic. Though, if the St. Mungo's Healers weren't able to identify it, perhaps it was a new invention, or even the early stages of a new invention...and that would definitely rule Malfoy out, because he was never that great with potions either, not when Snape wasn't around to play favorites. I'd have to remember to share that observation with Aldershot later, to get her off this Malfoy obsession...

Because I didn't want to waste time, of course. Not for Malfoy's sake. I wanted this case to be over with so I could get back to my real job as fast as possible. If Kingsley was going to loan me out like a library book, the least I could do was show the rest of the department how things are done among the Aurors. I couldn't have cared less for Malfoy's well being, though knowing his address now made things awfully convenient...

For talking, that is. If I wanted to talk to him. About stuff. Job-related stuff.

That's all.

I waited outside Malfoy's flat well into the afternoon, just long enough that the cashier in the greengrocer across the street started looking at me funny every time I ran away from the bus stop. I was about to alter my disguise to throw her off when, for the first time all day, the door to Malfoy's building opened up. The pianist from the surprise party came out.

I almost did a completely indiscreet double-take, but yeah, it was the same bloke—dark hair, beard, everything. He was also wearing a scarf identical to the one Malfoy had had on, and he tucked it tight into his cloak before he started off down the street. I followed him from the other side, all the way into the Leaky Cauldron. I already knew he was connected to Malfoy, somehow, if only because they'd both been in the same place, at the same time—perhaps Malfoy had gone to the Spotted Hippogryffs to meet this other bloke, for some reason? Besides, if one wizard living the Muggle life was suspicious, two wizards living in the same Muggle building was downright coincidental. There had to be some kind of connection.

The Leaky Cauldron was busy, but not so busy I couldn't see him stop off at the bar and have a short conversation with Tom. I slipped into Diagon Alley ahead of him and picked up his trail again there, trying to stay far enough behind him to go unnoticed. I held my breath for a moment when he turned down Knockturn Alley—surely evidence wasn't just going to fall into my lap like that? No, of course not, that would've actually been easy; after a short jaunt down Knockturn, the pianist made another left turn, onto Six Shoe Alley, and from the corner I watched him slip into the side door of a squat, garish building declaring itself Tiresias.

Now I was in a bit of a bind. As a rule I never, ever set foot in Six Shoe Alley, not since a pretty disastrous outing with Fred and George when I was eighteen. That had ended with me being chased out of a brothel by a dwarf, and George having to convince Mum that his trousers had been stolen by rogue house-elves. These days when I had time to go out at all, I went to Muggle bars, where there was no chance I'd be seen by someone who might recognize me, so this was unfamiliar territory. Besides, I wasn't exactly dressed for clubbing—but the longer I waited on the corner of Six Shoe and Knockturn, the clearer it got that my pianist wasn't coming back out. If I wanted to find out what he was doing, I'd have to go in and find him.

I braced myself, transfigured my trench coat back into robes (and after I thought about it for a minute, I transfigured my robes into something that wouldn't look quite so out of place at a club—I hoped). I headed for the doors of Tiresias, where a bouncer with a neck as thick as my torso stopped me there. "Cover charge," he grunted at me—not a question, a demand.

"Er," I said. "How much?"

"One Galleon seven."

I flinched. "Er. Sure I'm not on the guest list?"

"There is no guest list."

Crap. "Then I reckon I'll just—"

_"Ooooh,_ let that one in for free!"

The shrill voice just about made me jump out of my skin, and when I worked out where it was coming from, I had to fight the urge to run away. A...well, a person was standing just inside the doors of the club, wearing a sleek satin evening gown and a jeweled tiara. I might've been able to call that person a woman, if not for the prominent Adam's apple and distinct lack of tits. As it was, I was still blinking when whatever it was grabbed me by the hand and pulled me inside. "Darling, you are just too precious for words," he-she-it said, patting my captive hand with fingernails like daggers. "You come here and enjoy yourself any time. I insist."

"Thanks," I said.

He-she-it leaned in close and whispered in my ear. "If you have any trouble at all, just ask a server for Madame Helene, I'll be right with you, mmmkay?"

"I will," I said, and didn't exhale until "Madame" Helene was well out of sight.

If I thought that was going to be the most traumatic moment of the evening, I was sorely mistaken, because the moment I turned around to survey the interior of the club I flinched. It was as bright and tacky on the inside as it was on the outside—lots of bright colors and clashing patterns on everything, though the predominant theme seemed to be pink. The walls were plastered with an assortment of badly-drawn nudes in peculiar color schemes, most of which bordered on the pornographic, or at least tried to. There were only a handful of people inside on that particular evening, but all of them were dressed to match the décor, lots of leather and glitter and more color than I'd ever wear in a lifetime. If someone set out to construct the diametric opposite of The Golden Claw, this would be it.

I skirted around the edge of the empty dance floor towards the bar, and eventually I picked up where my pianist had got to—he was playing a bright pink piano tucked into a nook on the far side of the room. He looked, well, about as out of place as I must've, since neither of us were wearing glitter or leather, but he was playing enthusiastically, the same shitty Weird Sisters cover he'd played the night before. Another ambiguously gendered person tottered up to the piano in spiked boots and tried to slip some coins down the back of the pianist's trousers; he whipped his head around and snarled him-her-it off without missing a note. Nice to know I wasn't the only one to get a cold shoulder from him.

"What'll you have?" the bartender asked me. Except for the kohl around his eyes, and his sparkly scarf, he actually looked fairly normal.

"Rum and co—er, pumpkin juice," I said. I'd definitely been spending too much time in Muggle bars.

"Coming right up."

"How much will it be?"

The bartender bloody _winked_ at me. "For you? On the house."

I took a deep breath and looked more closely at those nudes on the walls. It wasn't always easy to tell, but I spotted a couple of blokes touching blokes and birds touching birds. No bloke/bird combinations. I looked at the customers. The closest table was filled solely by wizards (or wizard-shaped people of ambiguous gender) and they were all a bit, er, friendly with one another.

Merlin's balls, my first time in Six Shoe Alley in seven years and I'd walked right into a gay bar.

I almost walked straight (hah!) back out again. I'd spent way too much time trying to keep my secret to end up outed in a work-related accident. I wanted nothing to do with these people in their leather and glitter and inexplicable _things_ that showed off way, way too much skin for this time of year. I definitely didn't want to sit here and get hit on by a bartender or Madame Helene the drag queen or God knew who else. _Get out!_ cried the Hermione-voice in the back of my head. _Get out while you still can!_

Only problem was, my pianist was still here. And I did still have a job to do.

The bartender brought me my drink and I pretended to take a sip out of it. He put a great deal of effort into wiping a very small spot off the surface of the bar, near my elbow, most likely because I was the only person sitting there. (At least, I hoped that was his only reason.) I got his attention and nodded towards the piano. "Who's that bloke up there?"

He let go of the rag, which continued to rub at the spot, and braced his elbows on the countertop with another wink. "What, see something you like? His name is Lysander White."

"Hmm. He play here often?"

"Oh, yes. Madame Helene likes to have live music when she can, says it adds class."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that the best way to add class to this place was probably a wrecking ball. I watched White finish up one song and crack his knuckles loudly before starting in on the next. "What's he like? Personally, I mean."

"Mmm, don't bother with him," the bartender said sagely. "He's a right cactus, especially with customers."

"Didn't say I wanted to bother with him," I said. "Just wanted to compliment him on the music."

The bartender snorted knowingly. "Right."

"Honest."

"You're still out of luck." The bartender prodded the rag further along the countertop with the end of his wand. "He's a bitch to everyone he sees, especially customers, and he's got all the social life of a fruit fly. I've never seen so much self-loathing in one queer in my life."

I had been pretending to take another sip of my drink; I almost inhaled it. "Er," I said. "Really?"

"It's really sort of pathetic," the bartender carried on with authority. "I mean, we've all got our issues, right, but if you turn around and project all that onto the rest of us, well, you're just left all alone, aren't you?"

I pushed my glass towards him. "Sorry. I've, um, I've got to go."

"Oh," he said, and shouted at me as I walked away _very very _fast, "Come back any time!"

I walked back to the Leaky Cauldron without bothering to fasten up my cloak, even though the sun had already gone down. Inside the pub the crowds were still bustling and nobody was queer, or at least if they were they were keeping it to themselves. Just like me. Because that was how it was supposed to be.

_Did you know you're loathing yourself?_ the Hermione-voice asked sweetly.

_Shut up,_ I told her. _I'm not allowed to talk to myself on the job._

Eventually I did go back to Malfoy's flat, where I was meant to have been all night, instead of following queer pianists. I concentrated on noting who came and went, and on running away from buses, and occasionally on running away from the lady at the greengrocer, rather than worrying about the Hermione-voice or the people at Tiresias or being pathetic and alone. Eventually the night got colder, and the busses stopped, and the greengrocer closed for the night; around two or three in the morning, when I was about ready to give up and head to bed, I saw White make his way back to the building and step inside. A moment later a light came on in an alley window on the second story, the only light in the whole building.

I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I fished into my pocket for Malfoy's address. It was a second-floor flat as well.

I quickly crossed the street, slipped into the alley, and made my way up the fire escape on the side of the building. If I was careful, I could lean over the edge of the platform and peek through the lit window into the flat. I could also have fallen to a messy death on the pavement, of course, but I had had a sudden and unusual idea—or perhaps the idea had me.

Peering through the lower corner of the window, where the broken blinds didn't quite cover the glass, I saw White toss his cloak onto a shabby little sofa and unwind his scarf. He crossed into the bedroom, one window over, without turning on the light (not that I would've tried to look in that window even if he had—I was curious, not suicidal). I braced myself on the edge of the platform and waited for what felt like an eternity, waiting for White to come out again.

He didn't.

Malfoy, wearing nothing but an indecently loose pair of pajama bottoms, did.

My hand slipped on the railing of the platform and I cracked my head against the window sill. Gritting my teeth to keep from swearing out loud, I pushed myself up to look again. Malfoy was hanging up White's cloak and scarf—the scarf I'd seen both of them wear today—with a disgusted look on his face. He turned back towards the bedroom door, showing off his straight, smooth back and the barest hint of an arsecrack over the band of the pajamas. Then he turned out the light.

I threw myself back onto the platform and pressed my forehead against the bricks, for concentration as much as to stop the bleeding. It looked like Malfoy had a boyfriend. Malfoy had a _wizard_ boyfriend, no less. A wizard boyfriend with a bad attitude and loads of unspent free time, if the bartender at Tiresias was right.

I had a sudden hunch that I'd found our poisoner.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

That night I went to Central Records, only to discover that, in a pit of despair where paperwork goes to die, there wasn't a single scrap of information on Lysander White. No birth certificate, no OWL or NEWT results, not even one of those minor citations that everybody gets for using magic where maybe possibly a Muggle could see it if they squinted, and _everybody's_ gotten one of those. Which meant that either White was a new arrival in the United Kingdom—unlikely—or "White" wasn't really his name.

The next morning—or later the same morning, whatever—I went back to Diagon Alley and chased publicans and barkeeps all over wizarding London, starting with the owner of the Spotted Hippogryffs. After a calculated detour into Knockturn Alley, I tracked down Aldershot and Rickler in the Enforcer's wing of Magical Law-Enforcement. Aldershoot's hair was a bun this morning, still pulled tight enough to give her permanently raised eyebrows, though she did her best to lower them at me when she saw me approach.

"Weasley," she said. "So nice of you to drop in on us."

"I think I've got something," I said. "Something on the poisoner, maybe."

"You mean Malfoy?" Rickler asked.

"Sort of." I hadn't taken the time to rewrite my notes, so they were kind of chaotic and some of them were on serviettes, but I spread them out on Aldershot's desk and shoved aside some other scrolls to make room. "Malfoy has a—a roommate, going by the name of Lysander White. He's a wizard musician who showed up in Knockturn Alley about seven years ago, having apparently crawled fully-formed from under a cabbage."

The words _Knockturn Alley_ sure got Aldershot's attention. "Knockturn? Doing what, exactly?"

I hesitated. "He was...sort of an errand boy. Sometimes a clerk. Worked a bit for Borgin and Burke's, Dramm's Apothecary, two different book dealers, that sort of thing. He became a pianist a few years ago, but he's certainly still got contacts in that part of the Alley."

"But how does that tie him to Malfoy, except circumstantially?" Rickler asked.

"Because Malfoy hasn't been seen in our world since his acquittal," I pointed out. "Not in Knockturn, not by anybody."

Aldershot's eyebrows moved together sideways without any motion up or down. "Are you suggesting that this White has been Malfoy's courier, then? Procuring the ingredients so that Malfoy could make the poison?"

"If White's not the poisoner himself," I pointed out. "Which is entirely possible."

Rickler snorted. "How can that be? Malfoy's the one who works at the Golden Claw."

Okay, that one stumped me. I admit it. "Maybe," I said, "maybe, er...maybe Malfoy is just the patsy. Or an unwitting courier. Or under the Imperius curse?"

Aldershot frowned deeply, so deeply I was afraid that at any moment her bun would spring open and knock down the cubicle wall. "Weasley," she said, "I don't mean to offend, but you seem awfully convinced of Malfoy's innocence from the outset of this investigation."

"Because the evidence against him is all circumstantial," I said.

"So's your evidence against White," Rickler said.

"White has the Knockturn Alley connections to get himself a poison so rare not even St. Mungo's can sort it out," I said.

"Malfoy is placed at the scene, and he has a motive," Aldershot said.

"He changed sides—"

"The Kneazle doesn't change his spots," Rickler said.

Aldershot nodded. "Weasley, at best you've proven that Malfoy has an accomplice, and for that I'm actually willing to forgive you for your little vanishing act."

"Vanishing act?" I asked. "I was investigating—"

"As were we." Aldershot picked up one of the scrolls I'd pushed aside and used it to sweep all my notes off the desk; I Summoned them back up to me, but they were all out of order, and one of the paper serviettes got damp and smudged on my shoe. "Rickler and I have contacted fifty-two public and private establishments where Malfoy—or whoever—may have procured the ingredients for a poison."

"And?" I asked.

Rickler deflated a bit. "Well—we inquired whether anyone had made any unusual or large purchases recently—we specifically sought out places specializing in more exotic ingredients—or whether anything had been stolen or gone missing in an inexplicable manner, or just about any strange activities, really."

_"And?"_ I asked.

Aldershot cleared her throat. "Nothing," she said coolly. "Aside from a few growers trying to sell goods contaminated with a fungal blight, whom we fined appropriately."

"Ooh, yes, you're really furthered the investigation there," I muttered.

Aldershot gave me the kind of look that should turn a bloke's bits into pudding from the sheer nastiness of it. "Weasley, I realize that Aurors aren't generally known for playing well with others, but I'd like to remind you that this is my case and for the moment you are under my authority."

"Yes," I said, "and you can thank me for giving you the lead on White whenever you wish."

She gave a funny sort of growl and shuffled her scrolls of notes almost violently. "Fine" she said eventually. "Thank you. We'll set up a tail on them both.

"Excellent," I said. "I'll take Malfoy—"

"No, no," Aldershot said. "You've already been following White."

"But I'd prefer to go after Malfoy," I said, though the thought of going back to the Golden Claw made me a bit ill. "After all, he works tonight, you can't follow him inside the club—"

"Rickler can, though," Aldershot pointed out. (Rickler blinked and asked, "I can?") "Besides, this is your lead, you have a right to follow through on it."

"I don't mind letting someone else take over," I said quickly.

"But it's more practical for Rickler to follow Malfoy—" ("It is?" Rickler asked) "—he knows far more about the Muggle world. He can blend in better."

I wanted to dispute that somehow without revealing my habit of going to Muggle gay bars, but then I realized that Aldershot was smiling. Smirking, really. Just a bit. That _bitch_. "Fine," I said, and gave her a _very_ nasty look. "I'll stay on White."

"That's very professional of you," she said with a sweet, sweet smile I wanted to kick.

_You can't kick your coworkers,_ the Hermione-voice said.

_Go to hell,_ I told it.

Instead of kicking anyone, I went home and kipped for a few hours before turning to the question of my wardrobe. If I was going to return to Tiresias, I'd have to blend in, which would seem to mandate a certain amount of glitter and/or leather, based on initial reconnaissance. Problem was, I did not own any glitter, or any leather, or anything that could really pass for club attire, at least for a wizard club. I did possess a pair of blue jeans with a couple of strategically placed holes, and they certainly had a bewitching effect on the Muggle blokes I'd slept with, but I wasn't certain that counted. On the other hand, I couldn't exactly wear my uniform robes on the dance floor.

Wait, was I even going on the dance floor? I'd have to, if I wanted to blend in. Though I couldn't really imagine anyone getting particularly dance-y to light piano music. But I'd have to interact somehow or else I'd stand out. _It's just for work,_ I told myself. _If anyone ever asks, I can always explain I was there for work._

_That's not very honest of you, _the Hermione-voice said solemnly.

_I'm a dishonest person._

I ultimately went with a pair of jeans (not _the_ jeans) and a button-down shirt that just happened not to be all that buttoned, under a loose open robe in a complementary color. Instead of going to White's flat this time, I went directly to Tiresias, where, true to Madame Helene's word, the bouncer let me in without a cover. I felt strangely naked when I hung up my cloak, a feeling that wasn't helped by the way the cloakroom attendant whistled at me. I kept saying to myself, _just doing my job,_ as I walked toward the bar, again. There was a different bartender tonight, a witch with a lot of spikey jewelry to match her spikey hair, and she ignored me after she mixed my drink. Almost all the tables were empty so early in the evening, so I snagged one, and waited for White to come on stage.

I found a better distraction when Madame Helene emerged from the back in another boat of a satin evening gown. He (or she, or whatever) made a point of bestowing kisses on a handful of people, sometimes on the hand and sometimes on the cheek, and one blush-worthy smacker right on a bloke's mouth. I don't think he was expecting it, but he looked thrilled anyway. Helene made her way to a big booth in a far corner, under the tackiest of the nude posters, followed by a train of admirers that probably made up more than half of the people in the building. They all crammed in around her, and I heard her squeal about "drinks on the house."

A waiter, one of the he-she-it-things, came by with another drink for me even though my first one was still full. "I didn't order this," I said.

"Complements of Madame Helene," he-she-it said with a suggestive smile.

I glanced at the corner booth, where she seemed to be holding court with her fan club. "Really? That's...generous of her."

"Oh, she's a wonderful person," the waiter said, and got big dewey eyes and a little breathless hitch in his-her-its voice. "She really made this place what it is today, you know, brought us all together...before her, if we wanted to go out, we had to go out among _Muggles,_ can you imagine that?"

"Must've been horrific," I mumbled.

"Oh, it _was_—but now we can all come together and be ourselves, our real selves, in the real world. It's just so exciting." The waiter sighed and looked wistfully at Helene's chosen few in the corner booth. "She's just brilliant."

"Er...yeah, really." I checked my watch; White had been on stage this time last night. "Say, when does the music start around here?" I asked.

The waiter jiggled his-her-its shoulders in a way that showed off just how loose his-her-its top really was. "Oh, the band should be here any minute—I reckon they must be drunk already and can't find the club."

"Band?" I asked, trying to cover for myself. "What sort of a band is it?"

"Ooh, all sorts of things—a great dance band—they play all weekend, so if you like them, you can come back tomorrow, too." He-she-it winked at me. "That's my night off."

"Er," I said. "We'll see." The waiter, apparently put off, strutted away with a little pout, and I barely remembered to transfigure the alcohol in my glass to water before I slugged half the drink down at once.

White wasn't working tonight, which meant my presence here was a bust. I could escape, go home, be back among normal people..._And you'll have to admit to Aldershot that you fouled up the tail, _said the Hermione-voice.

_Like Rickler will do any better with Malfoy,_ I told her.

_Or you could still get some useful information while you're here,_ the Hermione-voice pointed out.

_Yeah?_ I snorted. _Like what?_ But even as I thought it, I found myself looking at Madame Helene again. She definitely made eye contact for a moment. The night might not yet be a total loss; I picked up the drink, transfigured away the alcohol again, and made my way up to Helene's booth.

The court, male and female and ambiguous, saw me coming and started nudging and winking and giggling well before I got near them. I'm sure Helene saw me, too, but she didn't react until I had stood at the edge of the booth for a few minutes. Then she shushed whoever she was talking to and smiled sweetly at me. "Hello, darling," she said with a bit of a purr. "So glad to see you back!"

"I'm glad to be back," I said, with one fist coiled in my robe pocket. The other was wrapped around my glass, which I raised to her. "Thank you, by the way."

"Oh, it's nothing at all," Helene said, batting her eyelashes. "For you, it's on the house. Come, sit."

She patted a sliver of space next to herself in the booth, and I blinked a little bit, because there was no _way_ I could get over the tangle of legs wedged under the table, never mind fit in that gap. But one of the members of the court pulled me practically into his lap, and then someone else tugged my arm, and pretty soon I was being pushed and pulled into the booth by a half-dozen very _grabby_ hands. So I wasn't exactly in my best state of composure when I landed half in Madame Helene's lap, in the middle of the booth, and her throwing her wrap over my shoulder and leaning against my shoulder didn't help much.

She was quite a bit shorter than me and built lightly, which I suppose helped to pull off the whole drag queen thing. She patted my wrist, managing to miss the sticky spots where my drink had sloshed over the rim of the glass in transit. "There," she said, "much better. Tell us your name, darling."

I calculated my options and didn't like the answer I came up with, but with the Hermione-voice tsking in the back of my head I did it anyway. "Ron," I said. "And you're the famous Madame Helene."

That was the right thing to say, insomuch as it sent the court tittering and Helene herself smiling coyly. "Oh, dear, you flatter me...famous, you say?"

I shrugged and sipped my drink. "I've heard excellent things about you."

She pinched my cheek. "Oh, are't you a sweet one? Tell me, sweetheart, where _have_ you been all these years? I've never seen you in my club before."

"Around." I sipped my drink again to stall; most of the court had their attention on me and it was a bit unnerving. "Suppose I've never had the—the courage, before, to come in."

"Ooh, and what gave you the courage tonight?" Helene asked, leaning very deep into my personal space.

Once again, I considered my options, and decided this was as good an opening as any. "I was actually hoping to hear your pianist play," I said. "I think his name Lucian? Lycian?"

"Lysander," Helene said, and there was a flatness to her voice that told me I'd said the wrong thing. She leaned back a bit. "I'm terribly sorry, darling, but he doesn't work tonight."

I nodded. "One of the waiters told me. He's quite good—" and here I thought of a good way to recover— "You must've been, er, very clever to hire him."

"Well, yes, I daresay it was one of my better moments," Helene said, all modesty again. "Though I'd better warn you, love, Lysander isn't the friendliest fellow in the world—you'd be far better off pursuing someone a little...warmer?"

I might've actually been able to ignore the innuendo if Helene hadn't stuck one hand into my lap. I'm afraid I might've actually squeaked a bit. "I just wanted to hear the music," I said quickly, which sent the whole court tittering again.

I was rescued from imminent molestation by a bloke who slipped around the back of the booth and cleared his throat. He was probably the only person in the club besides me not wearing something leather or sparkly—just plain dark robes and a plain dark cloak. "Madame?" he said. "We're ready."

Helene sighed dramatically and let go of my thigh. "If we must," she said, then smiled beatifically at her court and blew a few kisses. "I'm terribly sorry, my lovelies, but I've business to attend to."

There were genuine groans and frowns from the court, but they all shuffled out of the booth obediently so that Helene could glide off whence she came. I watched her pass by the bartender and snag her by the spikes; I couldn't hear everything they said, but I had the distinct impression that the instruction "on the house" got passed along. Then Helene was gone, and the court started to go their separate ways.

A glittery bloke tapped me on the shoulder and grinned brilliantly at me. "Oi, you. Want to dance?" he asked.

I glanced at the stage, where, yes, a very hung-over looking band was setting up their instruments. I was technically on the job, I had an objective, and I'd failed to get anything from Madame Helene. _We really should be leaving now,_ the Hermione-voice said severely.

"Sure," I told the bloke.

Now, let me make a few things clear. I didn't drink—I charmed the liquor out of everything the lesbian barkeep threw at me. I also didn't get off with anyone, not that I didn't have ample opportunity. I danced with a few blokes and one very drunk witch, I chatted, I nursed my non-alcoholic drinks. I tried to get more information on White, but all the regulars gave me the standard line—he was a prickly asshole with no known friends who nevertheless could play the hell out of that hideous piano, or else they'd never put up with him. I got plenty of adoring commentary on Madame Helene, as if opening the first proper gay club on Six Shoe qualified her for sainthood.

Last call left me with a funny disconnected feeling had absolutely nothing to do with drinking, and I tried walking it off in the cold, wet air. The patrons of Tiresias were...nice. Friendly, even. They'd welcomed me into their little cliques without question, and most of them hadn't tried to grope me. I'd never spent so much time in a club before—usually I just stayed long enough to pull a likely-looking bloke, we shagged at his place, and I was back home before bedtime. Just dancing and chatting had been...fun. Nice.

I was clearly out of my mind.

_They're only friendly with one another because they don't have anyone else,_ I reminded myself. _Outcasts, every one of them._

_But they seem like such happy outcasts,_ the Hermione-voice said.

_How can you tell if they're happy?_

_Well,_ _they don't seem to be talking to themselves._

The voice had a point, and I was so busy working out a response that I walked right into someone coming around a corner. I started to mumble an apology until I stepped away and recognized, out of all the possible people I could've run into, Draco fucking Malfoy, blinking at me in a street lamp.

I grabbed him before he could run away _again_. "What the hell are you doing here?" I asked.

He thrashed and tried to shrug me off. "I'm walking home, you idiot," he snarled. "What are _you_ doing _here_?"

I glanced around; damn, I had walked straight to his flat. "Looking for your boyfriend, actually," I said, without letting him go. "Know where I could find him?"

Malfoy blinked. "What in the name of Merlin are you talking about, Weasley?"

"I think you know perfectly well," I said. "And if you want my help, I'm sure you know where to find me."

"If I wanted secret codes, Weasley, I'd read the _Quibbler."_

"I know what he's up to," I said softly—I would've whispered it in his ear if I was certain he wouldn't try to bite me for it. "And I can help protect you."

Malfoy suddenly went very still, and his eyes fixed on something over my shoulder. "You mean Higgs?" he asked softly.

I blinked at him. "Who?"

He shook his head and managed to slip out of my hands. "Never mind," he snarled, tugging on his scarf. "If you'll excuse me, it's past my bedtime."

"Malfoy, who's Higgs—?"

"Piss _off _already!" He ducked away from me arm when I tried to grab him again and took big backwards strides away from me. "It's none of your business! It's not even any of my business!"

"I'm trying to _help_ you, you stupid bastard!" I shouted back.

"Well, I don't _want_ it!"

I clenched my fists. "You started this!"

"Excuse me, _you_ grabbed _me—_!"

Windows facing the street started to light up, probably from all the shouting, and I quickly backed into a shadow while Malfoy hurried into the building. When he failed to come back outside and keep arguing with me, I made a rude gesture in the general direction of his alley window and Disapparated back to my flat.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

Because it was a weekend, I had a serious lie-in; it wasn't quite noon when I rolled out of bed, but only just. I headed for the loo and found an elderly man wearing nothing but a pair of Harry's boxers squinting at himself in the mirror. He glanced at me and grinned, revealing intermittent teeth. "Morning, mate," he said, and with a few prods of a very familiar wand he gave himself a couple more hairy warts on the nose. "What d'you think?"

I rubbed my eyes, and shook my head a bit. "Er. Too much," I told him. "Can I have a piss?"

The old man tapped his face with his wand and turned back into Harry. "Sure. Didn't think you'd be up for a another couple of hours, the way you were snoring."

I watched him cast another charm on his face, this time turning into a hook-nosed Pakistani. "Can I have a piss without you in here?" I asked.

"Oh, right." Harry popped his glasses back into his face, which made the illusion flicker and fade out in patches—a peculiar thing to watch. He scooted out of the loo past me, and I pressed myself against the door frame to let him by. "Something wrong?" he asked with one cocked eyebrow.

"I'm fine," I said, and shut myself up in the bathroom. I was still feeling off-kilter, and rather more _gay_ than usual, if that makes any sense, and dropping my boxers with Harry changing faces two feet away from me was just a bit much to be putting up with. He likes to remind me how it doesn't bother him to be undressed around me just because I'm queer; he doesn't seem to have caught on that it might occasionally bother the hell out of _me. _

A shower and a bowl of cornflakes did wonders for my head, and I watched Harry—now properly dressed—practice a few more facial illusions in the loo. "What's the project?" I asked him.

"Surveillance with Tonks," he said, and gave himself a green mohawk and lip ring. "Got to be able to keep up with her, you know?"

"Bit dicey using illusions though, isn't it?" I asked. "A low-flying pigeon or something and _poof—_" I flicked my finger at the mohawk, which flickered and vanished entirely.

Harry scowled at me and conjured it again. "That's why I'm practicing," he said. "There's no way I can transfigure and untransfigure myself that many times, I'd end up leaving my nose on my chin or something."

"Might be an improvement," I said.

"Wanker." He prodded his face and added a few more piercings. "What about you, then? You were out late."

"Trailing a suspect," I muttered, which was technically true.

"Eh?" Harry grimaced at himself in the mirror, then banished all the piercings and turned the mohawk pink. "So the new assignment was decent, then?"

"Depends on your point of view," I said, and explained about being _on loan_ and the poisonings. He nodded, snorted and grimaced in all the right places, and his eyebrows shot up when I mentioned Malfoy's involvement. "...and spent the night trying to find out more about White."

"And did you?"

I shrugged. "Not much." I didn't mention running into Malfoy; in the cold light of dawn...well, early afternoon...I was beginning to wonder if I'd made a mistake. If he wasn't going to help me—us, that is—with the investigation, he could easily turn right around and warn White that we were onto him. Or if Aldershot and Rickler were right and he was the poisoner, well, I'd blown the whole case to hell, hadn't I? But I really didn't think Malfoy was the poisoner. "Do you think Malfoy's the poisoner?" I asked Harry.

Harry shrugged and sat on the edge of the toilet. "Truthfully? The circumstantial evidence is stronger."

"But it's still circumstantial," I said. "And it's not like he's another MacNair."

"No," Harry said sort of thoughtfully, "Malfoy's never been a killer."

"So you agree that it's probably White, then?"

Harry raised his eyebrow at me. "I didn't say that."

"But if it's not Malfoy, it has to be White."

"Not necessarily," Harry said. "What about customers, at this club? Got any names for them?"

I sighed. "No. They're a bit too _discreet_ for that. Though Aldershot says she's still interviewing employees."

Harry rolled his wand through his fingers a few times. "So it still looks like Malfoy's your best bet for information, at least."

"How d'you know he knows anything about it?" I asked.

"Two wizards in a Muggle club—it's an awful coincidence."

"But it could be one, and we'd be wasting our bloody time on the wrong bloke."

"You really think he's innocent?" Harry said with his eyebrows knit.

"Let me put it this way," I said, "last time I saw him, he didn't look guilty."

"What did he look like?"

I thought for a moment about Malfoy's wind-burned face in the streetlights. "Annoyed," I said, then added, "tired. Sad, maybe."

I glanced back at Harry, who was looking at me very oddly. "Mate," he said slowly, "you sure this is just about wasting time?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

He shrugged and looked at his wand. "I just haven't seen quite that sort of look on your face in a while, that's all."

"What look?" I demanded. "I haven't got any look."

"All right," Harry said, "suit yourself."

"No." I stepped toe-to-toe with him, even though that technically put his head about level with my navel, since he was sitting down and all. "No, you explain that, Potter. You think I fancy him or something?"

"Let's go with 'something,'" Harry said, leaning back to look at me properly. "'Cause there would be a lot of things wrong with you suddenly fancying Draco Malfoy."

"I know that," I snapped, "so it's good that I _don't _fancy him."

"You're awful devoted to the idea that he's just an innocent bystander in this," Harry said.

"You sound just like Aldershot," I snapped, and headed for the kitchen.

Harry followed me and took up a position on the other side of the table, while I poured myself some coffee. "I didn't say anything about you fancying him before," he said, "You brought it up."

"You said I had a look!"

"I could've meant you looked constipated!"

"But you didn't!"

"No, because last time you had that look you were piss-drunk on the floor and telling me what you wanted to do to some footballer you saw on the telly!"

I gaped at him. "I never did!"

"You did so, but that's not the point." Harry folded his arms over his chest. "Mate, we're talking about professional ethics here. If you can't be objective about a suspect, you should quit the case."

"I can be objective," I told him. "I'm totally objective."

"You're just positive, in the absence of any evidence, that Malfoy's boyfriend is the poisoner."

"Yes! No!" I shook my head. "There's evidence. It's just a bit...er..."

"Dodgy?"

"Y—no!" I shook my head and looked at him. "Harry, I can't fancy Malfoy, I don't even like him."

"You used to despise him," Harry said.

I had; when we were kids, I had hated him more than just about anything else in the world. But now... "I reckon...I feel sorry for him," I told Harry. "He's got a pretty shitty job, and his boyfriend is apparently the world's biggest bastard, and...well...he's come so far off his high-horse he's working for Muggles, you know? And he just looks...sad."

Harry said, "You've got that look again."

I rolled my eyes at him. "You're making that up."

"I am not!"

"I haven't got any bloody look—"

"—it was Christmas before last—"

"—and I don't fancy Malfoy—"

"—I didn't even know what some of it _meant—_"

"—and even if I did, he bloody started it!"

_You shouldn't have said that,_ the Hermione-voice told me, while Harry said, "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

For a moment I blanked out completely.

Then an owl crashed _through_ our kitchen window, shrieking like a banshee with a hangnail. Harry swiped at it, but it banked and drilled me straight in the abdomen before I could get my hands up to catch it. I toppled back into the kitchen counter, and the owl started hopping around my feet, hooting and pecking at my socks. It had a scroll tied to its leg, and it was wearing a very small purple helmet. "Express owl from the Ministry," I told Harry, who was peering at it from behind a chair. I plucked the owl's leg and broke the seal. "It's for me—"

_Weasley—_

_Report to St. Mungo's immediately. There's been another incident._

—_Aldershot_

"Fuck me backwards," I mumbled, and crumpled the scroll.

"Something wrong?" Harry called.

"New victim. Got to go."

He watched me throw on my uniform robe and a pair of trainers from my bedroom door. "This conversation isn't over," he said.

"Yes," I said, "it is. Good luck with the mohawk."

Harry's frown dissolved into the hospital as I Disapparated. I know I wasn't being particularly diplomatic with him, but there's only so many diplomatic ways to say _you're dead wrong._ And there wasn't any _look_ involved. I don't get looks. Hermione and my mum and Ginny get looks, and those are usually the last warning sign before an eruption. Harry was mad.

The witch at the hospital's front desk directed me to a closed, secure ward on the fourth floor, where I had to show my badge three different times to get in. It turned out not to be a proper ward, even—when I stepped inside, I found myself in a long corridor lined with doors, where Aldershot and Rickler were talking to two Healers.

"...transferred for treatment as soon as possible," one of the Healers was saying as I walked up. "There's an Obliviator stationed at his bedside, of course, but I'm afraid a nurse or two is starting to show the strain."

"He's conscious, though?" Aldershot asked. "And verbal?"

The other Healer nodded. "Oh, yes, he's quite well aside from the spots and all. A bit groggy, but we suspect it might be something the Muggles did."

Aldershot nodded. "We'll talk to him immediately, then. Once they bring him here, he'll be useless."

The Healers both nodded, and one of the suddenly transfigured her uniform robes into a baggy greenish shirt and matching trousers underneath a long white coat, with some kind of metal and rubber apparatus wrapped around her neck. She opened one of the long doors, which lead into another busy corridor full of people: some were dressed like the Healer, some were sitting in rolling beds with rails, some were walking around in short little smocks and pushing wheeled racks with bags of water dangling off the top. I heard a fellytone ring before the door shut again.

"Weasley," Aldershot said, dragging my attention back. "Glad you could make it so quickly."

"Your timing was great," I said. "What happened?"

Aldershot gave Rickler a nasty sort of look (see, it's only women who get _looks_) and he coughed and cleared his throat. "I, ah, I wasn't particularly successful in tracking Malfoy through the Golden Claw," he mumbled.

"What d'you mean?" I asked. "He works there, it's not like he's going anywhere during the night."

"It appears," Rickler said, "that the club is frequented by a certain..._type_."

I sighed and rubbed my nose. "Don't tell me. Somebody started flirting with you and you ran away screaming."

"How did you know what sort of a place that was?" Aldershot asked indignantly.

"I thought it was obvious." They both blinked at me. I struck a limp-wristed pose with my pinky sticking out and mimicked Mr. Cox's lisp. "'Our clientssss value our dissscretion.'"

"I thought he was just terribly posh," Rickler muttered.

Aldershot folded her arms across her chest. "Still, we've another victim on our hands and we at least know that Malfoy was in the building."

"Which doesn't make him guilty," I said. "Look, I lost White last night—"

The Healer in Muggle clothes came back and interrupted me. "He's awake," she announced. "You can talk to him now."

Once again, we transfigured our robes into trenchcoats and followed the Healer through the doorway, into a Muggle hospital. It was loud, and it smelled bad, and I kept waiting to see a doctor cutting somebody up in the corridors. The Healer lead us to a private room and nodded to a bloke at the door who was not at all discreet about the wand tucked into his jacket sleeve.

The poor bastard lying in the bed was indeed covered in small green spots, some of which had become shiny blisters. His hair and eyes had also turned green, but he was sitting up and looked alert. "Hello again, Mr. Norrington," the Healer said. "These people are here to ask you some questions."

"Are they with the police?" Norrington asked in a whiny sort of voice.

"We're investigating what happened to you," Rickler said, which didn't technically answer the question. "Now, er, what can you tell us about your whereabouts last night?"

Norrington shrugged a bit. "I just closed a massive deal for my firm, thought I'd celebrate with—er—with a business associate."

"At a club called the Golden Claw?"

"Yes," Norrington said, drawing it out hesitantly. "I, er, might've been in there for a bit."

"Do you remember what happened while you were there?"

"Don't think it's any business of yours."

I sat down on the edge of Norrington's bed. "Look," I said, "we know what sort of a place the Golden Claw is, so there's no need to play dumb. What we'd like to know is who you saw and what you did while you were inside."

Norrington's face went a pasty color under the spots. "I don't know what you're talking about, the sort of place that is, it's as if you're implying—"

"You're queer," I said. "And you go to the Golden Claw to hang out with other queers. That about right?"

Norrington's mouth started to open and close like a fish. Aldershot said, "Weasley, let me handle this," in the sort of voice that ought to have left a layer of frost on everything in range. I stood up and let her take my place. "Mr. Norrington," she said, "my colleague didn't mean to imply anything untoward—"

"I certainly hope he didn't," Norrington rasped.

"—but we would like to know what you did at the club," she added firmly. "It may be important."

Norrington pondered this for a moment, and his brows furrowed deeply; this caused one of his blisters to crack and start leaking greenish fluid. "I went with my—er—personal assistant, Jack Williams," he said, with a tone that meant the main thing he got assisted with was his cock, "and...and I don't remember what we did."

"Had a bit too much to drink?" Rickler said sympathetically.

Norrington shook his head emphatically. "No no no, I'm on a medication—I was only going to have a bit to drink, I can't drink too much or my heart gets funny."

I leaned forward out of my corner. "Do you remember arriving at the club?"

"Yes, yes..." He paused, pursing his lips tightly and cracking another blister. "We arrived, we took our seats, I ordered a bottle of champagne, and Jack said something about the pianist...and the next thing I remember, I woke up here." He forced a smile at us. "Isn't that strange?"

None of us had a chance to offer our opinions on the question, because the door to the room burst open, and a bloke about my age with a barrel of gel in his hair came in, the Obliviator hanging off his shoulder. "Peter!" he cried out. "Peter, I've been so—_oh my fucking—"_

The Obliviator, at just that moment, must've Confunded him from behind; he froze, eyes still bulging at the sight of Norrington's sores, and then blinked a few times. Norrington said, "Er. This is Jack Williams, my...assistant. Jack, I was just talking to the police."

He blinked at us, then turned back to Norrington, moving in slow motion. "Pe—er, Mr. Norrington," he said. "I was worried sick about you."

"You were with him last night, Mr. Williams?" Aldershot asked.

"Yes," Williams said, with the same guarded look as his boss.

"At the Golden Claw?"

The poor bloke looked cornered, so Norrington said, "He was with me when I walked in, I remember that much."

"What?" Williams said, and his voice hit an unfortunate octave. "You've lost your memory? Do you have amnesia? Quick, what's my name?"

Norrington batted away Williams' pawing hands. "For Christ's sake, Jack, I'm fine!" he said. "You're making a scene!"

Williams recoiled, blushing. "Sorry."

"Mr. Williams," I said, before that touching show of domesticity could go any further. "You were with Mr. Norrington all night at the club?"

"Well—yes—mostly," he stammered.

"Define 'mostly.'"

Williams glanced at Norrington sheepishly. "He disappeared on me, at the end—I was going to get him one last club soda, but when I got back to the table he had gone. I thought perhaps he went for the car, so I ran out to look, but the driver hadn't seen him, and by the time I got back to the club they were closing up for the night..."

A shrill, tinny jangle lit up the room: Aldershot and I both jumped, Rickler looked around wildly, and Williams pulled a small device from his jacket pocket and held it to his ear. He proceeded to talk into it like we weren't even there. "Hello, Jack Williams...yes...no, I've found him, he's in hospital right now..."

"Who is he talking to?" Aldershot asked Rickler warily. Rickler shook his head.

"It's called a—a sellone," I whispered—I'd shagged blokes who had them. "It's like a fellytone without all the wires."

Williams' eyes bulged out again, and the Obliviator readied his wand, just in case. "What?" Williams shrieked. "What do you...? No. No, that can't—you're not—there must be some—because he's right here, and he's lost his mind, but only a bit—look, tell the bank they're wrong! They've got to be...he can't have! I'll call you back." He clicked the fellysone shut and turned to Norrington, looking stricken. "Peter...there's a problem with the bank."

"What sort of a problem?" Norrington said.

Williams swallowed. "They've, er, they've just processed an EBT for...for..." Williams swallowed, then leaned in and whispered the amount into Norrington's ear.

Norrington's jaw dropped. _"WHAT?"_ he shouted. "Who in God's name authorized that?"

Williams swallowed again. "According to Ms. Pinksy...they used your account information."

"Impossible," Norrington said, "I guard all that very carefully, there has to be a mistake—"

"It's no mistake—"

"Ring my solicitor immediately!"

"I think we're done here," Aldershot said quietly.

We walked back to St. Mungo's and stashed ourselves in a corner of the tearoom. "Aldershot, you did check to see if the other victims had their memories modified?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes. "What do you think we are, Weasley, amateurs? There was no sign of a Memory Charm—it must be a side-effect of the poison."

"Terribly convenient side effect, don't you think?" I asked. "Since it's protecting the poisoner and all."

"He did mention Malfoy," Rickler pointed out. "And champagne—perhaps the poison was in the champagne?"

Aldershot shook her head. "Can't have been, the assistant drank it as well."

"And it's not like Malfoy served them anything," I said. "He plays the bloody piano."

We all stared into our teacups for a moment. I thought about Malfoy, and White, and professional ethics. _Malfoy leaves the wizard world, goes to work for Muggles, shacks up with White...someone poisons a load of Muggles...Malfoy snogs me...this bloke loses his money and his memory..._ Nothing lined up. And, Malfoy had mentioned someone named _Higgs_ last night—maybe Harry _was_ right, and White was a red herring—

"Someone has to go back into the club," Aldershot said again. "Someone who could pass for—er—the usual crowd."

The both looked at me. I said, "What?"

"Aren't you lot trained in disguise?" Aldershot asked.

"Oh—yeah, of course." Once my heart rate went done a bit, I asked, "Are you suggesting I—?"

"You've been so eager to follow Malfoy before now," Aldershot said. "Unless you don't think you can pretend to be—er—"

"No," I said, "I'll be fine." _After all, I've been pretending to be straight for the better part of seven years. _"It'll be a piece of cake."


	6. Chapter 6

6.

Preparing for the assignment took the better part of the afternoon. Harry, thankfully, was gone when I returned to the flat, so I didn't have to deal with another row about professional ethics. I went through another round of agonizing over my inadequate wardrobe, because there was no way I could wear The Jeans to any place as posh as the Golden Claw and expect to blend in with regulars.

I also debated how to disguise my face, just in case Cox or someone else on the staff recognized me. The hair, of course, always had to go—I had about a gallon of potion that reliably turned it dull brown—but I had to resist the urge to conjure myself some heinous spots and a pair of buck teeth, just to keep anyone from looking my way.

_You had fun at Tiresias,_ the Hermione-voice said. _You might have fun here._

_I'm not supposed to have fun, I'm supposed to do my job._

_That isn't any way to live._

_Aren't you supposed to be my better judgement?_

_Actually, you seem to be doing most of my work for me..._

I eventually borrowed a suit and tie from Harry's closet and left him a note about it; it took a bit of bewitching before it fit me properly, but with the potion in my hair and an illusion on my face, I thought I looked the part of a Muggle with more money than was good for him. At least, I hoped so.

Shortly before the club opened, I met up with Aldershot and Rickler in a café just a few streets over. "This is called a _credit card,_" Rickler told me, and gave me a square piece of plastic with numbers and a name stamped on the front. "It's got money inside it. Muggles use them to buy things."

"How does it open up?" I asked, looking at the edges. (Most of my experience in Muggle clubs involved other people buying things for me.)

"No no no—you need a machine to do it—" He stopped me from picking at it with my thumbnail. "Just give the card to the bartender and he'll take the money out with the machine."

That didn't sound at all safe to me, but nobody ever said Muggles were sensible, did they? Rickler gave me a few more tips, and then Aldershot leaned over the table at me and said, "Remember to keep an eye out—"

"On Malfoy, because he's evil, right, yes," I muttered. "Gotcha."

"No," she said, with a scowl. "I talked to Williams some more this afternoon, and he said Malfoy never stopped playing while Norrington disappeared. He was at the piano the whole time."

My eyebrows shot up. "Are you actually admitting Malfoy might not be involved?"

"I'm not ruling anything out," she said mulishly. "But if he is involved, he can't be working alone."

I nodded, thinking of White, but also the name Malfoy had mentioned the night before—_Higgs._ Ironic that just when Aldershot was starting to lay off him, I was beginning to think he might know something after all. But out loud I told her, "All right, I'll keep my eyes open for anything."

"We'll be outside the building, just in case," Aldershot said. "Nobody is going to enter or leave without our knowing it."

"Unless they Apparate," I pointed out.

"Well, we won't be able to follow them anyway if they do, will we?"

The Golden Claw at mid-morning had looked deeply posh, true, but with thin daylight leaking through the windows it had also looked sort of dusty and dull—a bit like furniture that's been stored in the attic a little too long. The Golden Claw at night, in contrast, was furniture that had been brought downstairs, dusted and set on a carpet made of solid bloody gold. Everything was very dim and moodily lit, and various groups of middle-aged-to-elderly men in different kinds of suits were gathered in their own private pools of light, talking and smoking and having drinks. None of them were actually touching one another—that alone was a huge difference from the lot at Tiresias—but I did notice a pair of blokes heading towards one of those "privacy lounges" Mr. Cox had been on about. One was pretty young, maybe thirty, but the other was about a thousand years old, and when he opened the door with his left hand I noticed a wedding ring. Lovely, eh?

I headed for the bar, on the grounds that it would be the best place to start a conversation with someone. The bartender wore a white shirt and a starchy little vest, and while he was way more efficient that either of the ones at Tiresias, he didn't quite make eye contact with anyone; when he asked me, "Can I get you anything, sir?" he was talking to my right shoulder.

"Rum and pu—coke," I said, and tried to cover for myself by clearing my throat. "Rum and coke."

If the noticed, he didn't react; he just told my shoulder, "Very good, sir," with a vacant little smile.

A man who didn't seem to realize he was too fat for his suit sidled up to me while I waited on my drink. His chins spilled over the little Mandarin collar of his shirt, and his thighs and arse were straining his trousers in the least pleasant possible way. "Hello, there," he said to me. "Don't recall seeing you here before."

I smiled at him, and tried to fake a bit of an accent—I'm crap at it, but I reckoned as long as I wasn't specific he wouldn't notice. "First time in London," I said. "It was recommended to me, though, by a business associate."

The other man smirked. "_Business_ associate, yes," he said with a knowing little wink. "They can be so helpful, can't they? Tell me, what business are you in?"

For a moment I blanked out, but the arrival of my drink helped me cover a bit. I gave the bartender the credit card, and while he looked at me rather oddly, he did take it away and run through some kind of machine under the counter. "Sorry. I'm in, er, teclonogy."

"Technology?" the bloke asked. "Ah, yes, technology. Loads of money to be had in computers these days, isn't there?"

"Loads," I said. "If you know where to find it."

"I'll drink to that." The bartender gave me back the card and made me sign a receipt. I looked the card over carefully, wondering how I could possibly tell if the bartender had taken too much out. My conversation partner chuckled. "Good idea, giving it a look-over. Couple of the fellows around here have had their identities stolen over the last few months."

I had no idea how you could steal someone's identity but it sounded like a nasty piece of business. "Oh? How bad?"

"A few were cleaned out entirely," he said, not looking at all upset about the idea. "Can't trust anyone these days, can you?"

"Not at all," I said.

The first chords of music floated over to the bar, and I looked up to see that Malfoy had started playing. He was wearing a starchy vest very much like the bartender, but didn't have any sort of nasty fake smile. His head was bent low over the keys, so low that from behind he almost looked decapitated; when I shifted to the side about to get a look at his face, I noticed that his eyes weren't even watching his fingers. In fact, a few times he closed them altogether and kept playing on, a sort of jazzy little song that sounded loads better than any Weird Sisters cover. I don't pretend to be an expert on Malfoy psychology, but watching him, I would almost have thought he was enjoying himself.

My new friend next to me suddenly chuckled and asked, "See something you like?"

I came very, very close to breaking character and snapping at him, before I came to my senses. "Just looking," I said. "He's quite good."

"Mmmm." My friend sipped his drink. "Not a bad arse, either. Pity he's on the staff—they're strictly look-but-no-touch."

I took far too big a swallow of my drink and nearly choked on the fizz in my nose. Something about this whole place just seemed so—_seedy,_ I guess is the word, underneath the fancy suits and expensive upholstery and all. A bunch of blokes just here for the sex, with the whole place set up strictly to be about sex, like a terribly posh and discreet sort of brothel. I thought again about Tiresias before the Hermione voice broke in. _Concentrate on the job at hand._

_Oh, so now you're on my side, are you?_ I scanned the room again, but I didn't exactly have the experience here to know regulars from...irregulars, I suppose, or to cotton on if someone was acting oddly. I eventually took a seat with my tubby new friend, and a few of his friends, and made some inane small talk while I monitored patrons coming and going from the private rooms. As near as I could tell, everyone who went in the back came out again, maybe with a couple of new creases in their suits but not really worse for wear.

I also monitored Malfoy, who played the hell out of that piano all night, except for a short break around midnight where he went round the back, though a door with a tasteful brass plaque that said EMPLOYEES ONLY. I thought about following him, but one of the blokes at the table was making eyes at me from the middle of the world's longest story about a dog, and I couldn't easily excuse myself. Malfoy was back out within five minutes; I told myself he had probably just run around back to take a piss. The rest of the night he bent his head over the piano and just played, one song after another. The patrons seemed to ignore him, and Malfoy ignored them, even a fellow who was sitting close enough to whisper in his ear, and talking loud enough to wake the dead. At last call he finished up whatever he was playing with a little musical flourish, stood up, and went back through the employee door. I trotted around outside the club (the fat bloke and his friends had disappeared long ago) and caught Malfoy just leavi ng the side door; he headed straight home, and turned the lights straight out.

I met Aldershot back at the same coffee shop. "Anything?" she asked.

"Malfoy took a piss at midnight," I said.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

She rubbed her eyes. "I suppose we try again tomorrow night."

"D'you think maybe the poisoner's taking a break?" I asked. "Until next week at the very least?"

She shrugged. "It's possible."

"Am I going to have to keep going back in there until he shows himself?"

"Is that going to be a problem?" she asked.

I wanted to say _yes! Yes, it is! Everyone inside is old and ugly and they tell long pointless stories about dogs, and they're all only there to pull, and it's creepy!_

The Hermione-voice said, _Since when has that been a problem for you?_

I told the Hermione-voice, _I swear that one day I am going to pry you out of my skull with a hammer._

"It's not," I said. "It just seems like it'll take forever."

She sighed. "To be honest, Weasley, I don't know what else to do."

I normally would've gloated over that, except I didn't really know either.

I went to bed, slept like a log, and woke up on Sunday around noon again, with a note from Harry taped to my chest: _I'm in the field all day. Don't hurt that suit. We're not done talking. We're out of milk._ I burned the note, bought milk, and spent the afternoon listening to Quidditch and deliberately not thinking about poisons, Malfoy, or categorical comparisons between my personal life and that of the fat man in the ugly suit at the Golden Claw, who only went out to pull and spent the rest of his time focused on his career and pretending to be straight.

I didn't think about that at all, honestly. Not a bit. The Cannons were playing.

There was no new victim that day, which was only marginally comforting. That night I put on the suit again, charmed it a different color, and went back into the club. I bought another rum and coke and leaned against the bar, next to a couple of fellows in silk shirts and sport coats who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else in the world. I watched blokes go in and out of the private rooms, I watched Malfoy play the piano, and thought about the utter futility of what I was doing. (With the job, I mean. Not some kind of general futility of my life. Why would I ever think of that?) And at the risk of Emilia Aldershot giving me the world's biggest _I told you so,_ I thought about Malfoy, and about what he did—or didn't—know. He seemed thoroughly engrossed in the piano and oblivious to everyone and everything around him. But when I had talked to him Friday night, he had said _Higgs._ Higgs. I kept thinking the name and mouthing the word, worrying on it like an itchy scab or a loose thread. Malfoy knew something about Higgs. Who was Higgs? What was he doing? Why did Malfoy think Higgs was worth an Auror's investigation? Why had he been so bloody scared when he thought that I knew about Higgs?

These were the questions. I really didn't like the potential answers. They annoyed me (which was totally irrational, but since when was I ever accused of being a reasonable man?) and worse, they made a bit too much sense.

I really didn't want Aldershot to say _I told you so._

That table near the piano was empty—I'd noticed it right away when I walked in, and I noticed it now. I walked straight over to it and sat down, easily close enough to poke Malfoy in the eye if he would just raise his head higher than his shoulders for a moment or two. Which he did, actually, when the quick jazzy song he had been playing gave way to something with a more conventional beat to it.

"Lovely weather we're having," I said to him.

He ignored me.

"Good weather for Quidditch."

His fingers slipped, and the chord was so flat that even I flinched. A few blokes at the tables looked our way, but otherwise Malfoy was as invisible as ever.

"How's the boyfriend, by the way?" I asked him.

He didn't miss a note this time, but he whispered very calmly under the music, "This club does in fact have a bouncer, Weasley, and if you lay a finger on me he will come out here and tie you into knots."

"I'm not going to touch you," I said, and stirred the ice in my glass a bit. "And you're not going to call the bouncer."

"You seem terribly confident of that," he said.

"I am," I said.

"I could signal him from here without you ever noticing," he said, in a tone of voice that was probably meant to be menacing, only it came out more like a whine.

"But you won't," I told him again. "Not until you know what I know."

Malfoy played on, but his head had become very erect on his shoulders, and if I wasn't mistaken he was repeating the same bars with almost no variation, over and over. "Why would I care about what you know?" he whispered.

"Because of Higgs," I said.

Malfoy missed another note.

"Would you like to know what I've figured out?" I asked.

"I could care less," Malfoy said, but his teeth were practically grinding.

"See, there's a man who comes in here," I said, while I twisted a bit in my seat so I could face Malfoy directly. "And he's slipping something to the Muggles. Now, it can't be in the food, because this place doesn't have a kitchen, so it has to be in a drink. But it can't be in any old bottle, either, because the victims have been very specific—picked out, almost.

"And this man, when he comes in here, the Muggles get sick. They get very sick. But nobody here has noticed anything. You lot are supposed to be discreet, but you're not bloody blind, so this man has to be working in the back—in the private lounges. He can control who drinks what in there, and he can take the back stairs out if things get rough, or just Disapparate without anyone seeing him. Am I right so far?"

Malfoy didn't move. I didn't really expect him to.

"But if this man is round back, how does he find his targets?" I asked. "He's got to have someone out here looking for them. Luring them back into the trap. Bringing them back to where this man can slip them a doctored drink.

"Or at least signal him that there's a good victim in the room. Signal him from the front without anyone noticing."

Malfoy had slowed down the song and was playing with very heavy, careful notes, apparently to avoid another obvious mistake. He whispered to me, "I don't know what this has to do with me."

"I don't either," I said cheerfully. "Because you sit up here, and you play that piano—really well, I might add—I didn't know you had it in you—you play that thing, and you don't look up. Ever. You wouldn't notice if Merlin, Harry Potter, and Dumbledore's corpse came waltzing in and started playing strip canasta."

I turned my head away, watching those two blokes in the silk shirts drift from the bar towards the door to the private rooms. "Or maybe you would," I said, just loud enough for him to hear. "Because if you know about Higgs, then who knows what else you might notice from up here?"

Malfoy stopped playing entirely and made a show out of stretching his fingers; he gave each of his knuckles a substantial crack. "You can't prove any of that," he said.

"I know," I said. "But that doesn't mean I can't arrest you anyway."

"If this is about that stupid party you threw—" he hissed.

"No," I said, "though I'm also dead curious as to what the hell you were doing there. This is about a crime that's happening right under your nose, Malfoy, and if you don't—"

A hand suddenly materialized on my shoulder, and for a moment I thought he had signaled the bouncer and I was about to get my own testicles shoved up my nose. But the hand just belonged to a waiter, who was looking at us oddly. "Sir," he said, "we have a policy about soliciting the staff members—"

"He's not soliciting me," Malfoy said quickly. "He's—look, I need to take my break now."

The waiter frowned. "David, are you—"

"Yes," Malfoy said, and he grabbed my other arm. "Yes, I am. This will only take a moment."

I let Malfoy pull me into the back of the club—not through the employee door, but through the door to the private lounges, which was just as moodily lit as the front at this time of night. I stopped him short before he could try to take me into one of the rooms. "Explain. Now."

"Not out here."

"I'm not going into one of these rooms with you," I told him.

He rolled his eyes. "What, afraid you might be overcome with the urge to molest me again?"

"You didn't seem upset about it at the time!"

Malfoy sighed. "Weasley, if you want to arrest me, just get on with it. If you want to talk to me, however, you will have to invest in me a modicum of trust, because I am not going to have this conversation where it might be overheard, _least_ of all in a fucking corridor."

I looked into his face in the strange moody lighting. He looked nervous and annoyed and tired, more tired that when I'd seen him Friday night after closing. "All right," I said. "I trust you."

He opened the door of the first room on the right.

The next thing I remember, I woke up in St. Mungo's hospital, covered in bright green spots.


	7. Chapter 7

7.

I woke up in St. Mungo's on Monday morning, covered in green spots and suffering from something that might be called a headache, in the same sense that January in Antarctica can get a bit nippy. Recognizing where I was, and then deducing how I got there, was a slow and painful process with a totally unsatisfactory conclusion. I was in the private ward reserved for Aurors injured in the line of duty, the only patient (for now). The spots covered my skin just as they had Norrington's—I peeked inside my pajamas—yep, all over. Green hair all over, too. I wondered if the Healers would let me keep that for a while—without the spots, it might actually be an improvement...

I was pondering this idea when Harry and Aldershot entered the ward, both in uniform. It was gratifying that Harry seemed as annoyed by her as I was. "Mate!" Harry called down the aisle when he noticed I was up. "How're you feeling?"

"Been better," I said, rubbing my forehead. I could feel where the spots were starting to blister there. "What the hell happened?"

"We were hoping you could tell us," Aldershot said with a frown. "You Disapparated from inside the club some time before closing last night."

Harry sat on the edge of my bed. "You popped into the kitchen at three in the morning and started raving about glitter and brothels and—things—I thought you were just drunk until you started coming out in spots. And you stained the suit."

I shook my head. "I don't know. Last thing I remember, I was talking to Malfoy—"

"Excuse me?" Aldershot said. "You were what?"

I sighed. "Look, I ran into him Friday night, he mentioned someone named Higgs and acted guilty. I didn't fancy waiting around for the poisoner to act again, so I put a bit of pressure on Malfoy, just to find out what he knew. He took me around the back to talk and that's the last thing I remember."

"You ran into him?" Aldershot incredulously. "And you were going to tell the rest of us when?"

"I didn't know if it was significant or not," I said.

"And then you put yourself in a vulnerable position with a suspected poisoner?"

"I still don't think he's the poisoner," I said. "And I had to show some kind of trust in him if I wanted to get him to talk."

"You trusted him," Harry said in a weird tone of voice. "Of course."

I glared at him. "I don't think we should jump to any sort of conclusions here."

"Jump to conclusions?" Aldershot said faintly. "Jump to—Weasley, you've been poisoned just like the rest of the victims, and the last person you talked to was Malfoy, how is that jumping to conclusions?"

"Harry," I said, "you said I turned up home at three o'clock?"

"Or about, yeah," he said. "I wasn't really paying attention."

I looked at Aldershot. "I was talking to Malfoy at eight, maybe nine o'clock at night. Almost as soon as I arrived. You going to tell me that he had me locked up in the back of the club for six hours, poisoned me, and let me run free?

"He must know the poison causes memory loss, even if it isn't fatal," Aldershot said. "He could've done anything, told you anything, knowing that after he slipped you a doctored drink you'd never remember it."

I let myself sink back onto the pillows. "Yes, because Malfoy is the most devious Dark wizard on the face of the earth, the veritable second coming of Grindewald."

She scowled so deeply that I swear her bun slipped. "In case you've forgotten, he is a former Death Eater—"

"We haven't forgotten," Harry said. He's got this way of saying something, perfectly calm and kind of soft, that can scare the living shit out of people. I reckon he learned it from Dumbledore. Aldershot blinked at him, and I think that was the first time that she really realized who she was working with on this case. Harry added, "Malfoy recanted and helped to bring his former master down. Whatever else he may have done, it's not right to hold that against him forever."

"Are you saying that you agree with Weasley?" Aldershot said uneasily.

Harry looked at me with an eyebrow up. "That really depends on what Weasley's opinion is."

I sighed, and looked at the ceiling. The spots were starting to itch fiercely, and I wondered if they were like dragon pox, blistering up worse the more you scratched. "I think that Malfoy does know something about the poisonings," I said. "I do not think he is the actual poisoner. He was willing to tell me something last night, and I can only assume he did tell me, and I just can't remember."

"You must've encountered the real poisoner, though," Harry said, with a glance at my spot collection.

"Obviously," I said. "Which means Malfoy must've given me just enough information to stumble onto him, but not enough that I was on my guard when I found him, or I wouldn't have accepted anything to drink."

"You could've been compelled to drink the poison," Aldershot said—almost mumbled, really. "Or even knocked out first."

I rubbed my eyes, mindful of the spots, and ignored this. "The important thing is, Malfoy talked. When it came down to protecting himself, he was willing to talk."

"Just like old times," Harry said dryly.

"Meaning," I said, looking at Aldershot, "he might be willing to talk again. But only if the blame is still on."

Aldershot glanced at us. "What are you getting at, Weasley?"

I sighed. "I'm saying, it's probably a good idea to arrest him now. Keep him scared to keep him talking."

You would've thought Christmas had come early; it was the closest I'd seen her come to smiling all week. "I'll write up the paperwork for it immediately," she said; the _I told you so_ was only implied.

I shut my eyes and listened to her go. Harry kicked his heel restlessly against the frame of the bed a few times. "I told your parents what happened," he said. "If it's any consolation, the clock never had you ticked for _Mortal Peril."_

"Comforting," I said.

"Though apparently it's been on _Up To No Good_ with alarming frequency this week."

I sighed. "I didn't make a mistake here, Harry. I don't fancy Malfoy and my judgement wasn't impaired."

"Well, it's a moot point, at least for now," Harry said. "The Healers told me you'll be in here for a day or two until all the spots clear."

"Brilliant," I muttered.

"At least you don't have a tail."

I didn't exactly consider this a bright side.

Harry shifted his weight a bit. "There's one other thing that Aldershot forgot to mention—that Muggle Relations bloke of your dad's went and re-interviewed all the other victims yesterday, he said. Apparently they've all had a spot of financial trouble since they were poisoned—someone getting into their accounts and taking money out."

I frowned. "How is that possible? I mean, Muggles may not have goblins, but they've got to have some kind of security around their money."

"It's called identity theft," Harry said. "Hermione could probably explain it to you better—you get a hold of someone's passwords and identifying information, and you can pose as that person and get at their stuff, and the bank can't tell you're lying."

That term sounded familiar, but I couldn't initially work out where I'd heard it before. "Sounds too easy," I told him.

He shrugged. "It's not supposed to be. That's why it seemed like too much of a coincidence. But they can't figure out yet how it fits into the scheme of things."

"Me neither." I glanced at him. "You're not my replacement on this, are you? Because you have my condolences if you are."

He smirked and shook his head. "Nah, I'm still cavorting around Brighton with Tonks and hoping that no low-flying seagulls ruins my disguise. Kingsley just gave me the morning to take care of you."

"How touching," I said. "I hope he knows that my paperwork on that pot wizard isn't getting any less overdue while I'm working on this."

Harry's smirk turned a touch sadistic, and I noticed for the first time that he was carrying a scarlet file folder. A horribly, nauseatingly, despairingly familiar file folder. "He does, actually. And he also knows you've got plenty of free time right now."

"I hate you," I said as he flopped the folder into my lap.

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger."

Harry left, and the Healers came in and scrubbed me up and down with a thick, gritty potion that made the spots become tight and crusty and itchier than ever. They pulled the curtain so I could get at the more private areas myself, and then they let me be with a plate of mush trying to pass itself off as shepherd's pie, and my spots, and my paperwork, and my thoughts.

_It's the proper thing to do, arresting Malfoy,_ I told myself while I scratched. _He'll tell what he knows to save himself._

_He's already done it once without much good effect,_ the Hermione-voice said. _Do you really think he'll do it again?_

_It's an established pattern of behavior for him._

_So was hating Muggles and fighting against Harry._

_What am I supposed to do?_ I asked myself. _I've got nothing. I remember nothing. He's got to tell me again._

_You mean tell Aldershot again, since you're cooped up here with your spots._

Oh, that would be a conversation worth listening in on. If there was anyone who deserved to have Malfoy's personality inflicted on her, it was Aldershot. Of course, she was also wildly unlikely to get anything useful out of him...in fact, the more I thought of it, the more I thought that not even Malfoy deserved to have Aldershot inflicted on _him_. That couldn't possibly end well. But I'd be out of here in a day or two—unless I added some spots with a marking pen, so I'd have time to finish all my paperwork—and I could certainly take over questioning him, because he'd shown he was willing to talk to me. He had to know he could deal with me. Bloody hell, compared to his alternatives, he'd probably kiss me the moment he saw me...

Scratch that, bad line of thought to be going down. But speaking of alternatives—I still didn't understand where White fit into all of this. If White fit into all of this. The name "Lysander White" had to be an alias, but for who, and why? One of Malfoy's old mates from Slytherin trying to evade Ministry notice, maybe? I hadn't recognized his face, but that didn't mean he hadn't changed his appearance...and I had recognized his voice, and voices are one of the most difficult things to disguise. There had been something really familiar about his voice that night at the party, but I just couldn't place it. Perhaps I'd been too drunk.

_Malfoy gets acquitted. Malfoy goes to work for Muggles. Malfoy shacks up with White. White works at Tiresias. Somebody poisons some Muggles. Malfoy finds out something about the poisonings. Malfoy snogs me..._

Nothing made sense and I had too much shit to do. I prodded my folder of paperwork. It totally failed to leap up and complete itself. Bloody paperwork.

I got scrubbed again, and my family started showing up in shifts just after tea. First were my parents, who were appropriately weepy (Mum) and encouraging (Dad), just like they were every time I got hurt on the job. Dad had apparently heard something about the case from Rickler, but he believed me when I told him I couldn't tell him any of the details because it was still open and not in my department anyway. Mum fussed over the spots and kept telling me not to scratch because they'd only get worse, which was usual for her, but as they were getting ready to leave she suddenly grabbed my hand and squeezed. "Oh, Ronald," she said, "what are we going to do with you?"

"Bring me some real food while I'm stuck here, I hope."

She started to sniffle again. "I just couldn't bear thinking that the last time we talked to one another it was a row."

Bloody hell, she was going to bring up that, was she? "I'm not dying, Mum," I said. "It's not big deal."

"It is," she said, and squeezed my hand tighter; I didn't have the heart to interrupt and tell her she was squeezing right on a blistered spot. "Because you could've been hurt worse. Every time I find out you're in here again I worry..."

This sounded suspiciously like the opening prelude to her second-favorite topic of conversation after my lack of a girlfriend, which was how dangerous my job was. "Mum," I said, "I don't think I feel up to this conversation right now."

"I just want you to be happy," she said. "That's all I've every wanted for my children."

"I know, Mum," I muttered.

"Tell me you're happy, Ron," she said.

"I'm happy," I told the red file folder on the nightstand. Mum, for some reason, thought it was close enough.

Ginny popped by for about two seconds to take a picture of my spots, Bill stuck his nose in to offer condolences, and then the twins came round, with smiles on their faces that boded well for nobody.

"Well, look what we have here," George declared.

"I thought he was meant to be sick," Fred said.

"Nasty spots, is what I heard."

"Funny, I don't see any difference."

I pretended to be engrossed in my paperwork. "You're real cut-ups, the both of you."

Fred swept a bow. "Just doing our duty to add some levity to the situation."

"Not that it's terribly difficult, mind you," George added.

"But we aim to please."

They both sat on the end of my bed, on opposite sides, with a bounce that caused me to blot the page. "Thanks for stopping by," I said (and managed not to grit my teeth too tightly between the words), "but I'd really just like to rest and wait for my next scrubbing."

"Aw, don't be grumpy, Ronniekins," Fred said. "You'll clear up eventually—just got to stop eating greasy food and touching yourself."

"This is supposed to cheer me up?" I muttered.

George sighed and patted my knee through the blanket. "Seriously, mate, you'll be out of here in a flash, right as rain. We had the same thing and we were right as rain in a week—right, Fred?"

"Right," he said. "Pretty soon your face will only be as ugly as it ever was, rather than, as it is now, pretty bloody hideous."

"You're one to talk," I muttered, then really realized what they'd said. "What do you mean, you had the same thing?"

"Eh, it was nothing," George said. "We were fiddling with a sweet a couple months for the Hogwarts market—Dismissal Dandies, we were calling 'em—"

"No," Fred said, "we were going to call them Freedom Fudges, because 'Dismissal Dandy' sounds stupid."

"It does not," George said, "and we figured out that chocolate wouldn't work with the Forgetfulness Potion."

"Only because you didn't stir it in properly."

"I'll stir your—" George noticed me making a fist around my quill in preparation for stabbing one of them through the eye—I wasn't picky—and quickly said, "Well, anyway, whatever we were calling 'em, we used some bad herbs in the preparation and they brought us out in blisters just like that. We didn't come here to get a fancy potion for it, though"

"And don't we regret that now?" Fred added, and reached out to ruffle my hair. "Such a lovely tie-dyed effect—ours just turned brown for a while."

I batted his arm away; puzzle pieces were suddenly falling together here. "Were the bad herbs you used, were they part of the Forgetfulness Potion?"

The blinked. "Yeah," George said. "Why d'you—"

I kicked off the blankets, and started rooting around under the night stand for my clothes. Fred looked alarmed. "What're you doing?" he asked.

"I need to go to work," I said.

"What? Now?"

"You just explained something important. Dammit!" Harry must've taken his suit home—I didn't have any clothes of my own here. "Look, can one of you be useful and fetch me one of my uniforms from the flat?"

They looked at one another, then shrugged. "Anything to help an Auror investigation," Fred said uneasily.

"Don't worry," I said, "it wasn't intentional."

George said, "Oh, good, I was worried for a moment."

"We do have a reputation to keep up..."

They both left, hopefully to get me clothing, and I paced around my bed despite the spot forming a blister on the sole of my left foot. A bad Forgetfulness Potion wasn't technically a poison, but even a trained Healer might not recognize the symptoms if she didn't know what she was really looking at. Aldershot had found a load of bad herbs on the market when she was looking into apothecaries. All the victims from the Golden Claw had lost their (well, our) memories...and all of them had lost big chunks of money around the same time, from their Muggle banks. I suddenly thought of the bloke in the horrible suit at the Golden Claw, the one who said lots of people at the club had lost money...but the poisonings only started recently...the same time those bad herbs were on the market...

I flipped one of the most useless forms on its blank side and wrote a quick letter to Bill; I paced some more, and submitted to another scrubbing, and still Fred and George didn't arrive. I wondered how bloody long it could take them to find a pair of uniform robes and bring them back here—unless they were rooting through my closet or something while they had the chance. All they'd find in there would be some fossilized socks and a load of gay porn, and at that point all I was thinking was that it would serve them right to find those and be traumatized for life. (The socks or the porn, both could do it; the socks had been back there for a very long time.)

I was still fidgeting when Aldershot came back with a stack of paperwork. "Weasley, I need you to sign off on these warrants as one of the investigators," she said, and thrust a stack of paperwork—another one—at me.

I grabbed and started signing away. "Listen, Aldershot, I think I've figured out what's really going on at the Golden Claw, and it's got nothing to do with killing Muggles. Hurting, yeah, but not killing."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean I think the poisonings were accidental." I flipped through a couple of pages and kept signing away. "I think someone is extorting money from Muggles at that club, or tricking them, or something, and then giving the victims a Forgetfulness Potion so they won't remember what happened. Except the potion's been tainted—these spots are an allergy—see?"

She frowned at me, not the usualy severe bun-popping frown, but the big-eyed frown that manages to convey _I think you might be a little bit crazy_ without actually saying it. "Where did you get this from?" she asked. "Did you remember something?"

"No, but my brothers clued me in. And it'll be dead simple to check up on, we've just got to find out who's getting the money out of the Muggle banks and how they're getting it into Gringotts so they can use it."

"How do we do that?" Aldershot asked. "The goblins will never let us audit their books—"

"I've already got it taken care of." I reached the last page of the stack, giving it my best _ROONIL WAZLIB_ with a flourish on the end for effect, and stacked everything back on top of one another. I started to hand the stack to Aldershot when something caught my eye—the name filled in on the primary warrant for arrest. _DRACO LYSANDER BLACK MALFOY, alias DAVID BLACK._

Lysander White. David Black.

Fucking hell

"Fucking _hell_," I whispered.

Aldershot folded her arms across her chest impatiently. "What now?" she demanded.

It didn't seem real even after I said it out loud. "Lysander White and Draco Malfoy are the same bloody person."


	8. Chapter 8

8.

Aldershot thought I was mad. That was okay. Fred and George, when they finally brought my uniform, thought I was mad. That was okay, too. The Healers all thought I was mad. Even that was okay. They weren't the ones I had to convince of it.

Unfortunately, Kingsley thought I was mad, too.

"Weasley," he said, "you're not making any sense."

"Yes I am!" I said. "This all goes back to Tiresias, that's how it all fits together! Someone affiliated with that club is stealing from Muggles and using a Forgetfulness Potion to cover his tracks, the poisonings were just a side-effect of contaminated herbs, and Malfoy knows about it because he's been using a glamour and two aliases to work for both clubs at the same time!"

Kingsley sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. I could sympathize, a bit—I was still half-green and spotty and raving in his office about a project that wasn't technically under his jurisdiction. I suppose I could've also gone to my dad about it, since the victims were all Muggles, but I would've had too much to catch him up on. Besides, Kingsley deserved it more. "One thing at a time," he said. "You're saying that Draco Malfoy and Lysander White are the same person?"

"Yes," I said, "it's his middle name, and his mother was a Black, you see? He must've been afraid to look for work in Knockturn under his own name. That's why he's such a bastard to everyone at Tiresias, because they might break the illusion if they touched him. Malfoy couldn't possibly have seen anything of what was actually happening at the Golden Claw, because it was going on in back and he was always out front with the piano, but if he recognized someone from Tiresias at the Golden Claw he might've been able to pick up something, that's how he knew and that's what he told me, that must be where Higgs is—"

"Higgs?" Kingsley asked. "You never mentioned a Higgs before."

I sighed. "Malfoy mentioned the name to me a few days ago—"

"When did you talk to him a few days ago?"

"Will you quit interrupting me?" I said, then remembered myself and added, "Sir?"

Kingsley leaned back in his seat and picked up a fatherly sort of voice. "Ron, you're making a lot of tenuous claims without a great deal of hard evidence. You're still a bit under the weather—"

"I've got spots, that doesn't mean I'm mad," I said. "Kingsley, everything fits. Someone at Tiresias is behind all this, Malfoy knows it, and it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out who it is because that place has a customer base of about twelve."

Kingsley opened his mouth to say something, but a thump from the other side of his office door interrupted him. "I'm in a closed meeting," he called out. "I'll be with you momentarily."

The thump came again.

"Just sign the paperwork and shuffle it over to the Enforcers," I said, "tell them we've got proof—"

Thump thump thump.

"I will be with you in a moment!" Kingsley called.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

I wrenched the door open, got halfway through shouting "What the bloody fuck do you want?" and ended up with an owl in my lap. It had a Gringotts seal around its neck and a scroll addressed to me in its beak. I tossed the owl into a handy open file drawer, ripped open the scroll, and laughed out loud. "There it is," I told Kingsley as I spread it on his desk. "There's the last piece of it."

_Ron,_

_I didn't actually read your letter or send you this. Please quit trying to get me fired. There were deposits on or just after the dates you gave me, all into the same account, though that one's got a history of big transfers from Muggle banks so I don't think any of the goblins would've noticed it. The name on the key is Terrence Higgs, and the transaction information is at the bottom of the scroll. If you tell anyone I told you this I will kill you._

_All my love, Bill._

"Terrence Higgs," I said aloud. "We've got a suspect."

Kingsley frowned. "We can't issue a warrant on illegally obtained evidence," he said.

"The rest of it is legal, though!" I said. "Kingsley, you know it makes sense, just kick it over to Aldershot and make her look into it and I'll tuck myself back into the hospital like a good boy."

For a minute I thought that Kingsley was going to tell me to, I dunno, go lay with a cold compress and wait for the hallucinations to pass. Then he folded his arms across his chest and said, "All right."

"All right?"

"All right." He sat down. "I'll write up the warrant and get it approved. Though the Wizengamot will probably thing that I'm utterly mad—"

Another owl swooped in through the open door and crashed into the opposite wall; it was wearing a little purple Express Post helmet as well. Kingsley picked up its scroll and dropped the new owl in the same drawer as the old owl. He read it and frowned. "Well, that changes things," he mumbled.

"What? What is it? What's wrong?" I demanded.

Kinglsey twisted around and hunched over so I couldn't read over his shoulder, but said, "Rickler just spoke with Mr. Cox of the Golden Claw. Apparently Malfoy showed up earlier this morning announcing he'd quit and demanding his final paycheck—"

"Oh, shit," I said.

"—and when Cox refused, he just walked out...Weasley? Ron, where are you going?"

"I'll be right back!" I shouted over my shoulder as I raced towards the lifts. "Just get the warrant!"

Malfoy was going to run, Malfoy was going to run, and I was going to have to chase the little git to get this all sorted out. Why the hell did he insist on making himself look guilty all the bloody time? It was like he enjoyed it or something. Didn't he see it would be so much easier on all of us if he'd just hold still and let me save his pretty, pathetic arse—

No, scratch that, _solve the case._ Which had _nothing to do with Malfoy._ Nor Malfoy's arse. Even if it was very nice. Bloody _hell_, I was going to need a vacation when this was over. There were too many queers running around and I hadn't gotten laid in far too long. A quick shag at some Muggle club where nobody knew or cared who I was, and then a few days among the firmly heterosexual, that ought to do the trick. I could go back to how things were, on my nice straight (hah!) track to a career and a family and the occasional night in a place like the Golden Claw, pulling strangers for a fuck in the private lounges for the rest of my life—

I Apparated from the Ministry to Malfoy's building without breaking my stride, then stopped and pounded my head against a handy brick wall. _Stop that,_ I told myself. _You are not a pathetic old pervert._

_Yet,_ said the Hermione-voice.

_None of this has anything to do with my lifestyle choices._

_Except to the extent that they've left you desperate unhappy and obsessed with the first bit of anything you've gotten in months._

_I'm not unhappy,_ I told myself, _I'm not obsessed, and I need to stop talking to myself now._

_Suit yourself,_ the Hermione-voice said.

Because I was covered in green spots and still had large green streaks in my hair, I couldn't exactly go into the front of the building; I considered my options and elected to try the fire escape again. There was a wino in the alley who looked at me with dull and bloodshot eyes as I clambered up the ladder. "Happy Christmas," I called down to him. "The end is near."

He saluted me with his bottle and went to sleep. Don't ever tell me I don't take anti-Muggle precautions.

Once again I stretched out over the side of the platform and peered through the dusty window into Malfoy's flat. It looked a mess—furniture turned up and stuff strewn about—but after a moment I saw Malfoy dart through the room with a pile of sheet music and underwear in his arms. I had to take my wand in the wrong hand to do it, but I charmed the window open and started to crawl inside.

I say "started" because my feet definitely left contact with the fire escape before my arms got enough grip on the window sill to pull the rest of me all the way through. I tried to grab onto the radiator under the window and got a handful of screaming hot metal. I may have shouted something to the effect of "Bloody fuck!"

Malfoy was suddenly standing in the doorway to the bedroom with his wand on me. There were dark circles under his eyes and his hair was rumpled and sticking up oddly, as was one side of his collar. He stared at me for just a moment, while I kicked at the wall outside for a toehold. Eventually he asked, "Weasley?"

"Yes, Malfoy?" I said.

"What in the name of Merlin are you doing here?"

"Currently?" I said. "Trying not to fall."

"In more general terms, please."

A toehold! I shoved myself further up through the window, but that only left me with the windowsill jammed into my bits instead of my armpits, and my face was just inches from the hot radiator. I flipped my legs up and walked on my hands for about a foot before making an awkward somersault into the room. I hoped the wino had gotten a good show. I stood up, brushed myself off, and reached for my wand before I remembered Malfoy was pointing his at me and not looking particularly stable. "I'm trying to stop you from running," I said.

He snorted. "Right. So you can arrest me."

"We're not going to—" I cleared my throat. "Well. We are going to arrest you. But it'll be all right."

Malfoy shook his head. "I've seen enough of the inside of Courtroom Ten already in my life, thank you."

"We need you to testify against Higgs," I said.

He raised his eyes at me. "You remember that, do you? I'm surprised. I think she's slipping."

"I...don't actually remember it," I said, for absolutely no reason that I can recall except for a hunch that dishonesty wouldn't earn me any points here. That, and I really wanted to know what had happened. "We got the name from bank records."

Malfoy backed into the bedroom and shook his head. "I'm not doing it," he said. "I'm already in enough trouble as it is."

"With who? With Higgs?" I dared to take a step forward, and Malfoy didn't hex me, just backed up further. He'd never had much in the way of nerve. "Just how deep are you in this mess?"

"I've nothing to do with it!" he said—practically shouted. "I already told you, I'm not involved."

"Funny, I don't remember that," I said. "Though I do remember being alone with you right before I woke up with this collection of fetching new spots, and some of my colleagues find that a bit incriminating."

Malfoy backed fully into the bedroom and suddenly slammed the door. I hit it with my shoulder and forced it open before he could lock it; he fell onto the bed, where a single suitcase was overflowing with clothes, sheet music, books and scrolls and an assortment of random crap. We drew on one another, wands practically meeting. "Do you think it's incriminating?" Malfoy asked in a strange tone of voice.

"No," I said. "I don't."

"Why not?"

I licked my lips. "I don't think you look like a guilty man."

He snorted, and lowered his wand, just a bit. "Must I really tell this over again?"

"Let me put it this way," I said. "An Enforcer, a Muggle Relations official, and possibly the head of the Auror's Division are going to be showing up here very soon. They will not be very happy and they will have a warrant to arrest you."

Malfoy sighed, and let his elbows fall to his knees, though he kept a dueling grip on his wand. "Then put that thing down," he said. "I can't concentrate with a wand in my face."

I lowered my wand, shut the door, and leaned against it. Malfoy scowled at me; I nodded at him. "Go on, then."

He straightened up, pointy little chin sticking out sharply, but his eyes were looking off to one side, not on my face. "As I told you last night, I've nothing to do with Higgs or his mad little schemes. I never wanted anything to do with them, and I told him so when he approached me—"

"He approached you when?" I asked.

Malfoy took a deep breath. "He approached Lysander White a little over a year ago about participating in a non-specific 'business venture.' I turned him down cold."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because seven years ago I went crawling to him for help and the son of a bitch laughed in my face."

I raised my eyebrows, not just at the trace of hot anger in his voice. "You'd just been set free seven years ago," I said. "What did you need his help for?"

Now Malfoy looked at me, and his expression was bitter. "What did I need help with?" he said. "Let's see, Weasley, my parents and most of my friends were dead. Most of the wizarding world thought I was either a Death Eater or a traitor to the Death Eaters. The Ministry had seized all my family assets for my father's crimes, and left me with nothing. Oh, yes, I was free, all right—free to starve."

Of all the wild theories I'd heard floated about Malfoy's fate after his acquittal, I'd never even considered something remotely like this. I swallowed the urge to—I don't know, apologize or something. We were too short on time. "So you went to Higgs for help?" I asked.

"I was looking for a job," Malfoy said. "I had gone to everyone I could think of, anyone I didn't think would kill me as soon as look at me ...at the time, Higgs had a good thing going with an old Belgian closet case who had more money that he knew what to do with. I hadn't talked to him in years—since I was a kid, really—but I thought, if anyone would have the gold to waste, if any wizard in the world would enjoy seeing me crawl, it'd be him.

"I pled my case to him. I begged him. I embarrassed myself far more than I am right now.

"He laughed at me and told me it was just desserts for the brooms."

That took me a moment to work out, before I suddenly remembered where I'd heard Higgs' name before. "The brooms?" I echoed. "He was still sore about the bloody brooms from _second year?"_

"He has a long memory and a sadistic streak," Malfoy said. "But he was my last chance, and after that I was forced to seek employment elsewhere. The Ministry arranged for the documentation—grudgingly—and I had the names altered.

"Why?" I asked. "Why the alias?"

He raised his chin again stiffly. " If I was to be exiled from the wizarding world, I was determined that there would be no looking back."

"Except for the part where you created an alias and got a job on Knockturn," I said.

He scowled, and his chin dipped a little. "I needed the money," he admitted. "Cox pays shit and I was only working three nights a week."

You know, I could've made a joke about that. I could've said quite a few things, in fact. Malfoy seemed to expect me to; he sat rigidly on the end of the bed, with a white-knuckle grip on his wand, and I could see his jaw muscles jumping. But looking at him like that, at how bloody damn _arrogant_ he could still manage to be after all this...well. From one stubborn son of a bitch to another, I had to admire it. So instead I asked him, "So it was as White that Higgs originally approached you?"

"Right," he said. "And I told him to fuck himself."

"So how did you find out about the scam?"

"I started noticing him at the Golden Claw," he said. "He'd lost his Belgian friend and I supposed he was looking for a new sugar daddy, one he could control. But eventually I realized he was leaving with a different bloke every night, and after a point it became rather obvious he was getting money off of them anyway—he was throwing gold around like it grew in his garden."

I checked my watch; Aldershot should've been here by now to arrest him, unless something else had held her up. Kingsley, maybe? "And this is what you told me last night?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Mostly. You hadn't yet figured out about White then.

I frowned. "But if that's all you told me, how did I get close enough to Higgs to get poisoned?"

"How should I know?" he said. "I went and did my job and you went and blew my bloody cover, that's all I know."

"Blew your cover?" I asked, stomach sinking. "What did I do?"

_"I don't know,"_ he said again, standing up, "but Higgs has figured me out—he sent me a bloody owl this morning, a warning, and if I don't get out of London soon—"

He didn't finish that thought, just started trying to close the suitcase, prodding it with his wand without any apparent effect. I grabbed his wrist from behind to get his attention. "Malfoy, do you really think Higgs can hurt you if you're in Ministry custody?"

"No, and I can't catch a cold if I'm dead," he snapped, and tried to shake me off. "Nevertheless, I don't intend either to kill myself or to march peacefully to Azkaban."

"You're not going to Azkaban," I said. "But we can put you in protective custody—in a _safe house,_ somewhere—and let Higgs think you're taking the fall for him."

"No, thank you," he said icily.

"Malfoy, be reasonable!" I spun him around—he was such a skinny bloke I probably could've tied his arms behind his head without much trouble—so I could say this to his face. "If you testify against Higgs you can keep your job—all of them—" He snorted at me— "and we'll protect you. I swear we will."

"You're going to protect me?" he said. "When you can't even protect yourself?"

"There were extenuating circumstances," I said. "Probably."

He rolled his eyes. "I said no. Now let me get out of here."

I stepped closer, basically pinning him against the bed, and another tactic. "Then think about revenge," I said softly. "He's going to go away for a long time for this, especially if it's been going on as long as you say. You can be the one to put him there—"

"You don't fucking get it!" Malfoy shouted, squirming. "I don't care about revenge, I don't care about Higgs, I don't care about anything! I've tried being a good guy, I've tried being a bad guy, and either way I've ended up losing. All I want is to get out of this alive and relatively intact, and all the rest of you lot can go screw yourselves."

"I'm not letting you do that!" I shouted right back.

"Why the hell not?" he asked. "You've still got Higgs cold—"

"I can't!"

"Why _not?"_

I kissed him. Again.

Somewhat to my surprise, he started kissing me back. Again.

Until someone suddenly pounded on the bedroom door, and I did the first thing that occurred to me, which was shove Malfoy away and leap as far across the room as possible, because I had _not_ just done that and I did _not _fancy him and I was _not_ going to sacrifice my entire bloody career for a quick fuck, no matter what the little voices in my head suggested was good for me.

"Aldershot, I can explain—" I started to say.

It wasn't Aldershot who burst into the room, however, and I had only a fraction of a second to appreciate that fact before I was Stunned.

Because that was just how my week was going.


	9. Chapter 9

9.

When I was revived, the first thing I saw was a portrait in blue and orange ink of a male nude groping himself, embedded in a sparkly pink frame. I had to be at Tiresias.

I raised my head and looked around: I was propped against the wall of a small room with a large desk, decorated in a predominantly pink-and-sparkly theme, with accents of faux fur. My hands were tied behind my back. The room had one very small, barred window and two doors; as I was contemplating these as means for escape, the club bouncer entered through one of them, letting in a gasp of noise from the dance floor. He shut it, locked it, and then settled into what I guessed was his default stand-around-and-look-scary posture.

On my left, Malfoy stirred awake, looked around, and whispered, "Weasley, I am going to fucking murder you."

"You weren't complaining a little while ago," I hissed back.

"Because _I was unconscious."_

"Gentlemen," said a lispy falsetto voice from behind the desk, "this is no time for pillow talk."

I couldn't see the speaker from this angle, but I recognized Madame Helene's voice, and next to me Malfoy scowled. "And you can go straight to hell as well," he said.

Helene tisked at us. "Language, Draco dear. Or should that be Lysander?"

Malfoy glared at me, as if this were all my fault, which it may in fact have been. I concentrated on Helene. "So you're in on this, too?" I asked. "Using the profits to keep your fan club in free drinks and body glitter?"

Helene leaned forward, and a slice of her face came into view; she was wearing an elaborate wig, and one eyebrow was raised to the hairline. "I may have to apologize to you, Draco," she said after a moment. "Here I had thought you went and _tattled_ on me."

It was my turn to glare at him. "You said you had told me everything!"

"I _assumed_ there were certain things you could figure out for yourself," he hissed.

"Ah, so it _was _through your assistance that Mr. Weasley found us last night." Helene turned a patronizing smile onto me. "Tell me, dear, do you remember anything that happened? I wasn't certain I got the dosage right, what with having to pour the potion straight down your unconscious gullet."

I gave myself just a moment to be pleased that I hadn't, apparently, gone down without a fight, before decided to simply bluff. "Why, are you nervous?" I asked. "Afraid I may've already told the Ministry about you and Higgs?"

Helene's eyes opened very wide, and her jaw hung open a bit. Malfoy pulled his knees to his chest so he could bury his face in them. "Weasley, you _imbecile,"_ he grunted. _"That is Higgs!"_

Oops.

Helene/Higgs murmured, "Well, that answers that question."

"Tell me, Weasley," Malfoy ground out, "who did you blow to get your current job?"

"Shut up," I said. "I'm having an off week."

"That is truly comforting."

"This is as much your fault as mine!" I snapped.

Higgs clapped his hands. "Ladies!" he called. "I wasn't finished."

"Can you give us a few moments to sort this out?" I asked.

"No," said Higgs.

"Damn," I said.

"We'll discuss it later," Malfoy muttered. "If he doesn't kill us."

"Oh, I'm not going to kill you," Higgs cooed. "As a matter of fact—" He conjured a pair of chairs in front of the desk. "Why don't you make yourselves comfortable?"

We both stared at him. I looked over my shoulder to confirm that, yes, we were still tied up. Malfoy snorted.

"Ah," Higgs said, and banished the cords around our wrists. "There. Terribly sorry about that."

I went for my wand, which was, predictably, not there; Malfoy made the same motion, then folded his arms across his chest. "I'd rather stay down here, thank you," he said.

"Malfoy, don't be an ass," I said.

"Listen to the man, Draco," Higgs said. "I just want to ask a few questions."

"Go fuck yourself," Malfoy suggested.

I gritted my teeth and tried to convey, using nothing but facial expressions, that after I told everyone in my office that this club was significant to the case, and furthermore after I gave Kingsley a bloody name which (unless Higgs had gone quite mad) should've been connected to the deed on this property and its business license, I expected Aldershot and Rickler, if not an entire detachment of Enforcers, to show up any moment with wands out. As you can imagine, it didn't work. "Malfoy," I said, "stand up. We don't want to be rude."

"Yes," he said, "We do."

"No," I said, "we don't."

"Why don't we?"

"Because he could still change his mind about killing us?"

Higgs said, "Now, Weasley, I'm not nearly that foolish. The murder of an Auror is a far messier business than I am willing to get involved in, and if I killed Draco, I would be throwing away a precious gift from Fate."

Draco leapt to his feet, snarling. "You think you can pin all the blame for this on me?" he demanded. The bouncer, sensing trouble, flexed his biceps in a vaguely menacing manner.

"Why not?" Higgs asked with a little smile. "You've been placed at the scene of the crime, you're already a suspect, and thanks to the misguided ambitions of your adolescence, no decent wizard will trust your word as far as he could Banish you. I couldn't have set things up better if I'd tried."

Malfoy's face was very white, except for two spots of pink in his cheeks. I grabbed his arm, hauled him towards a chair, and pushed him at it; he stayed standing, fists clenched. I sat. "But first you have a few questions, don't you?" I asked. "Because you still don't know what we know about you."

"Correct," Higgs said. He folded his hands and leaned over the desk. "And you will answer, if only to stall for time in the hope that somebody will notice you've gone missing and track you here before anything unpleasant happens."

I glanced at my watch; we must've been unconscious for quite a while, because it was almost eight o'clock. "It's certainly a possibility," I admitted. "Not likely, though. I haven't exactly been communicating well with my coworkers lately."

"Ah, yes, the maverick Auror striking out on his own in pursuit of the suspect," Higgs said. "You really are adorable, dear. It's a pity I'm going to have to Obliviate the shit out of you."

Malfoy suddenly sat down in his chair. "That's how you plan to do it, then?" he asked, with a funny hitch in his voice. "Mangle his mind and blame me for it?"

"More or less," Higgs said, with a horrible, cheerful calm. "But before that, I'm curious about a thing or two—mainly how you, Draco, deduced what I was doing."

"Easy," he said. "The weeks I saw you pulling at the Golden Claw were the only weeks you paid me on time."

"I see," Higgs muttered, and his falsetto slipped, though the smile didn't.

"I was right about that part, wasn't I?" I said. "You needed the money to keep this place open when you're treating half your customers to free drinks every night."

"I prefer to think of it as living within my means through creative accounting," he said sharply.

Malfoy snorted. "I prefer to think of it as your being unable to find anyone willing to put up with your weekly wardrobe budget."

Higgs leapt to his feet, fists clenching. "I don't need you conscious to continue with this," he growled, all pretense of femininity gone. "All I need to know is what I can safely tell the Ministry."

"The Ministry knows nothing," I said, trying to draw his attention back to me. There was no way I could keep stalling, but maybe if I was really clever (yes, I know, first time for everything)— "They're all convinced that Malfoy is guilty. I'm the only one who's ever thought he might be uninvolved."

Higgs leaned closer, with a look on his face that was almost hungry and definitely very creepy. "You're telling me that they don't know any of what you've learned?" he said. "Nothing that connects me or Tiresias to the Golden Claw?"

"None of it," I said. "And even if they did, they probably wouldn't believe it."

"Why not?"

I took a deep breath. "Because nobody at the Ministry would every believe a pathetic little faggot like yourself was capable of anything but taking it up the arse from someone with actual _intelligence."_

That did it. Higgs glared at me, and he reached into the top drawer of the desk—and there it was, Malfoy's wand, which I'd known he'd have handy for the last part of this scheme. "I think we're finished here," he said, and started to raise the wand towards me.

Just before his arm came up, I vaulted across the desk and tackled him. I heard Malfoy's chair squeal on its casters as he leapt away—running away, I'd expected that. Malfoy's wand tumbled away when I landed on top of Higgs, and I got in a nice solid punch across his face before I reached into the drawer for my own wand. I got my fingers around it, just a split second before the bouncer reached in and grabbed my wrist in a grip tight enough to grind the bones to powder. The bouncer yanked me backwards as Higgs came up with a punch of his own that rattled my teeth—damn it, why couldn't he be one of those fags that hits like a girl?

I popped Higgs in the face with the heel of my palm and felt his nose snap, and he staggered backwards. Once I got my feet under me, I spun around and slammed my forehead head towards the bouncer's face; we were both off-balance, but he was still reaching across the entire width of the desk, and he stumbled as he leapt backwards to dodge me. Unfortunately, he didn't let go of my wrist, and I had to leap over the desk with him to avoid getting my arm yanked off. I was lucky enough to land with one knee deep in his diaphragm, and that got him to let go—I scrambled up, but my wand was still in that drawer, and Higgs was pointing his own wand at me—

And then Higgs' wig leapt forward over his face.

I jumped back over the bouncer and grabbed my wand out of the drawer. Malfoy let go of the wig, shoved Higgs into the desk, and crossed in front of me to snatch his own wand off the floor. I put my back to the wall near the door, covering Higgs as he flung the wig away. The bouncer clambered upright, and for the first time he pulled his own wand, a monster that was probably half an inch thick at the base and long as a whipping rod. Malfoy, in yet another astonishing act of non-cowardice, covered him from my right, though the way his hands were shaking he was more likely to hex himself by accident.

"We seem," Higgs said thickly, "to be at an impasse."

"You could always let us go," I suggested.

"Higgs," Malfoy suddenly blurted, "Terrence—"

"Helene," he corrected with a growl.

"_Helene, _whatever—" Malfoy swallowed hard. "Just let us go. Please. I promise I won't testify against you—I'll leave town, leave the country—and without my testimony they've got nothing. You heard Weasley. They've got nothing. They'll probably think I just fled prosecution. Just, please, let us go—"

"Malfoy, don't be a tit," I snapped, then realized what he said. "Wait, 'us'?"

"Or just me," Malfoy said quickly. "You can have your way with Weasley, if you like."

Higgs snickered. "I wouldn't have thought you'd be so quick to toss aside your lover, Draco."

Malfoy and I said at the same time, "He's not my lover!"

I looked at him. He blinked. "Well," he said, "you're not."

"I know I'm not."

"Then why are you giving me that look?"

"I don't have any _look—_"

"Can you discuss this later?" Higgs said, sounding exasperated.

I snapped my attention back to him. "Look," I said. "Obviously we're a bit stuck here."

"Yes," Higgs said, "but I've a number of employees out there who would be more than happy to rescue me from a maverick Auror and his criminal lover."

"We're not lovers!" Malfoy and I both shouted at once.

I added, "And if you really think you're quicker with a wand than I am—"

I never got a chance to complete that sentence, because the door slammed open.

It broke my nose.

I went down, and the door bounced back again to hit me hard in the shin. A curse flared harmlessly against the wall over my head, and somebody screamed like a twelve-year-old girl. And then I heard the most wonderful sound in the world—Aldershot shouting "Freeze! Drop your wands!"

I shimmied out from behind the door to find a half-dozen Enforcers, plus Harry and Tonks, fanned out across the room. Higgs, the bouncer and Malfoy had all dropped their wands and put their hands over their heads. "She didn't mean you, you idiot," I told Malfoy through a mouthful of blood.

Harry spun around and lowered his wand. "Ron! Are you okay?"

"Define 'okay.'" I charmed my nose back together, though it still felt terribly sore. "Took you long enough to get here."

He glanced at Aldershot. "Somebody insisted on talking to the goblins first."

"Because somebody wanted a water-tight warrant," Aldershot said triumphantly. She flicked her wand at Higgs, conjuring a set of shackles. "Terrence Hillary Higgs, you are under arrest..."

After that there wasn't much to do but the boring parts—statements, reports, debriefing. More bloody _paperwork._ Malfoy, surprisingly, went along with it all rather willingly; I think he may have just been in shock. I answered lots of embarrassing questions and tried to justify some of my stupider actions without involving the phrase "Malfoy's arse," which was both difficult and humiliating. The worst part, though, came when my parents burst into Kingsley's office. Mum walked right up to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and started to sob. "My baby!" she wailed.

"Hello, Mum," I said. Aldershot looked alarmed, but everyone else had gotten used to this sort of thing.

"My poor baby!"

"It was the clock," Dad said quickly. "She came straight to my office wailing about _Mortal Peril. _We just wanted to see..."

"My _baby!_"

"Mum," I said, "can we step outside for a moment?"

She pulled away, sniffled, and nodded. I lead them to my cubical, while Mum licked a handkerchief and tried to wipe the blood from my chin. I sat them both down and said, "Listen. I'm fine."

"I was so scared," Mum said. "I thought, not twice in one day, I can't see my Ronnie in the hospital twice in one day..."

"I wasn't really in any danger."

"But the clock—"

"The clock is too sensitive," I said. "It was only a bit of peril."

Dad patted Mum on the shoulder. "There, Molly, you see? Right as rain. Now let's get out of Ron's hair..."

I took a deep breath and rubbed my eyes. Part of me couldn't believe what I was about to do, but another part—a part that sounded suspiciously like Hermione—insisted that this had been a long time coming. "Wait," I said. "Listen."

"Yes?" they both said.

"There's something I need to tell you," I said quickly, "that I've been putting off for a long time, because...for a lot of reasons, but I think now that I have to, before it's too late."

"Too late for what?" Mum asked. "Ron, what's wrong?"

I took another deep breath and clenched my fists. "Mum, Dad, I'm...I'm gay."

They stared at me. "Erm," Dad asked, "congratulations?"

I blinked at them. "I mean I like men, Dad."

"Of course you do, dear," Mum said, uncertainly. "You have lots of friends..."

"No," I said. "I mean I like men and I don't like women."

"Of course you like women," Mum said, "you and Hermione have been friends since you were small..."

I leaned against the wall and buried my face in my hands. _See?_ I told the Hermione-voice, _see why I didn't want to do this in the first place?_

_Perhaps they really don't understand,_ the Hermione-voice suggested. _They can be a bit...provincial, can't they?_

Someone knocked on the side of my cube, and I turned around. Malfoy was standing in the aisle, looking singularly uncomfortable. "Is this a bad time?" he asked. "Only apparently you have to sign something for me."

"Hello, Draco dear," Mum said—she had always been deeply conflicted about Malfoy, because on one hand he was yet another lost little boy to add to her collection, but on the other not even she could cope with his personality on a day-to-day basis. "Ron was just trying to tell us—er. Something."

I had a sudden thought.

_That's a bit blunt, isn't it? _asked the Hermione-voice.

_They are a bit provincial,_ I thought. "Malfoy," I said out loud. "C'mere."

He stepped into my cubical warily. I put my hand on his shoulder and pulled him towards me, then looked at my parents. "Look," I said. "It's like this." I turned back to Malfoy and planted what I guessed was an appropriately chaste kiss on his mouth.

Malfoy held his breath, and his spine went rigid, but he parted his lips just a hair and his hand sought mine of his shoulder. I heard my dad said "Oh!" and something thumped to the floor. I pulled away to look; my mum had fainted.

"Er," I said. "Is she okay?"

Dad swallowed hard a couple of times and then knelt next to Mum on the floor. "Er. Yes. I think so." He swallowed again. "Could we, er, have a moment alone, Ronald?"

I flinched a bit. Full names always equal trouble, even when you're twenty-five years old. "Sure," I said. "Take all the time you need."

I stepped into the aisle, and Malfoy followed me; I realized he was still holding onto my hand just before he dropped it. "So. Erm. You said I needed to sign something?"

"Yes. Right. This." He shoved some forms at me—the amount of parchment flowing through this building could wallpaper Hogwarts, turrets and all—and I fished a quill from my pocket to sign it with. Malfoy asked softly, "I take it they didn't know?"

"Nope."

"I see." Malfoy cleared his throat. "I suspect there was a better way to break it to them."

I did, too, but it was that or the Golden Claw—come out or end up another successful, lonely old fart still pulling anonymous shags in Muggle pubs. I handed back his paperwork. "They'll survive."

"Thank you." He folded the forms down the middle and started to walk away. I watched him for a moment—_him,_ not his arse, I swear it—before something occurred to me.

"Oi, Malfoy!"

He turned back to me. "Yes?"

I trotted up to meet him. "Thought you didn't care about anyone but yourself anymore," I said.

He folded his arms across his chest. "I don't."

"Then why'd you pull Higgs' wig?"

"Excuse me?"

I folded my arms and watched his face. "You stopped him hexing me back there," I said. "You could've just done a runner and left me to hang."

Malfoy looked down and sighed deeply. "Perhaps I've come to realize that those who sit on fences make better targets," he muttered.

I blinked at him. "That's very deep, Malfoy."

"Thank you, Weasley." He glanced back at my cubical, where presumably Mum was still coming around, and in a lower voice, he added, "You also wouldn't be particularly shaggable if your mind was melted."

_"What?"_

He looked at me, chin stuck up in the air, and not just because I was taller than him. "I believe we started something back at the Two Hippogryffs," he declared. "And I have a passing interest in finishing it."

"You do?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. And then added, "not that I've been obsessing about it for the past week or anything."

"Of course not," I said.

"Because I haven't."

"I would never have accused you of it."

"Your arse is merely _average,_ at best."

I raised one eyebrow at him, amazed at the freedom of standing in the middle of the Aurors' cubical farm and flirting with a fit bloke—any fit bloke—even if it was Malfoy. "You want to bet?"


End file.
